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I own an arsenal of ways to think,
and choose the weapon just as I see fit.
I’m packing color markers and red ink;
my Power Points are reinforced with wit.
I used a Glock once, at a rifle range,
but, even muffled, couldn’t stand the sound.
I wasn’t a bad shot, but it was strange,
the way the target swung with every round.
Sometimes I think, what if it happened here?
I’d lock the door, of course. I know the drill.
But every day we need to fight the fear,
and fear’s not something you can shoot to kill.
So, you can keep your bullets, guns and knives.
I’m armed with words, and working to save lives.
Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists' Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her new collection Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic is out now from Able Muse Press, and her sonnet collection Sisters & Courtesans is available from White Violet Press.