by T R Poulson
I wish all emergencies could take place like this:
a theater in the city, stage guns made of rubber
and metal to withstand so many drops and hits
in rehearsals, forgotten lines and flubbers.
The line: I am not throwing away my shot,
as the killer creeps in—Lord show me how
to say no to this—that flutter, why not
here among the songs? The heartbeat now
slows, the patron falls, as Aaron Burr’s pistol
pops. Dying is easy, young man, living
is harder. It plays out as in a crystal
ball. Gun! No prayers, thoughts, forgiving
this time. If only hearts could always feast
on rhymes, as the attack of living lurks, looms,
the gunman a mere actor, a ghost deceased
long ago. I want to be in the room
where it happens, where everything is just
musical, where lights give me an eyeful,
where words spoken, though fiction, I trust,
and paper walls surround non-shooting rifles.
T R Poulson lives in San Carlos, California. Her work has appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News, as well as in Rattle’s Poets Respond, Verdad, J Journal, and others. She enjoys basketball, windsurfing, and going to plays, including a recent performance of Hamilton in San Francisco, which took place the day before the performance in which there was a false shooter alarm.
