by Frank Sloan
My neighbor, the prison guard, aims a .22 Ruger at a crater on
thet fat yellow moon that
hangs low above a row of spooky hedge trees.
He probably believes he can hit it from here.
He’s very fond of his delusions, gets them wholesale from Fox TV News.
“My nephew borrowed a hundred bucks and never paid it back, so I took his gun! I don’t need another gun, but he needs the lesson!” When he pulls
the trigger nothing happens. The gun’s not loaded. “All you kids
need to wake up to the real world.” (I’m three
years younger than he is.)
I live in a gun happy state. We live in a gun happy country. My neighbor feels comfortable with a house full of guns, and I found my Halloween costume: a wounded
moon leaking her luminous guts into a vast bowl of gunpowder.
Ex-firefighter, ex-beat cop, ex-dirt farmer/cowhand/bouncer and current garden center flunky; Frank Sloan lives and writes in a small shack near the heart of the American empire. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he believes it’s a heart that merits salvation.