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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

ABOUT THEIR GUNS

by Elizabeth Poreba


Photo: Corey Morgan, 27, (left) has been identified as a person of interest in the shooting death of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee. Morgan was picked up on an unrelated gun charge with Dwright Boone-Doty, 21, last week in Evergreen Park. —Evergreen Park Patch, Nov. 24, 2015


Their guns make them persons of interest, but there is nothing to say about them
They have nothing to say, they need not speak, they have guns
Nothing was said as far as we know, but then for no reason the guns
They had the guns before, but nothing happened for a long time
as if the guns with their promise of nothing were enough,
but when that kind of nothing was not enough, they had guns.

Guns are like poetry because they make nothing happen
The guns mean that there is nothing to say
Nothing squats in the gun’s gleaming cylinder
Little abyss of nothing waits in the gun
Out of the gun, the bullet, bud of nothing
From the gun into the body so that nothing will happen there
Nothing anymore, nothing, not one thing more.


Elizabeth Poreba is a retired high school English teacher living in New York City. Her new vocation mostly consists of writing letters and attending rallies. She recently posed under the Statue of Liberty’s nose as she joined several hundred demonstrators brandishing red scarves in support of the Paris conference on climate change.