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| Photograph: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/EPA via The Guardian. |
"I am honored and humbled to announce
the sale of an American firearm icon…"
--George Zimmerman
When George Zimmerman advertised
an auction for “a piece of American history,”
the gun he murdered Trayvon Martin with,
it didn’t take long for the bidding to soar
to 65 million dollars, since withdrawn.
The money, George said, would go to two
worthy causes: protecting peace officers
from the violence of Black Lives Matter
protestors and fighting Hillary Clinton’s
“anti-gun rhetoric.”
Like a magician’s wand, this gun will
“Open presto” not just the wallets
of fatuous rich collectors but also
the deep Pandora’s box of bigotry
and racial discrimination.
Poets have no tropes for dopes who
uphold the Second Amendment in order
to justify the right to shoot to kill
any “other” in a hoodie on a dark
Florida night
And they have no tropes for hope that when
President Obama flies the White House
coop he’ll leave the legacy of a post-racial
society, for America is more racialist
than ever.
It turns out that George Zimmerman,
who’s been unemployable since his
acquittal, has accepted a bid of $138,000
for his piece, enough to keep him in beer
and skittles for a few years.
George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News, has a new poetry collection Bleak Splendor (Muddy River Books, 2016).