by Imogen Arate
Four of the Republican senators bankrolled by the NRA. From left to right Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Richard Burr, and Roy Blunt. —Newsweek has the “Full List of Republican Senators Who Receive Funding From the NRA.”
Every time a bullet screams a child's name
Congress rings in a payday
Every time gold-strung puppets mimic "thoughts and prayers"
NRA makes it rain
The higher the body count
the bigger the ROI.
The stock market may be free-reeling
NFTs may be worthless
but LaPierre makes good on his promises
We've arrived at the age
of lead-pegged currency
We've come to celebrate each day
as gun-violence survival day
drunk the mercurial mead
of gilded hearts playing
a mental-health sleight of hand
while we thirsted for salves
that vanished as another gunman
turned the page onto another tragedy
danced our last to the whizzing rhythm
of gun-powdered blues
or which crisis actors got paid
while feigning condolences
Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses, a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest, where she has served as a national-level poetry judge in 2021 and 2022. Her poetry has appeared in 18 publications on four continents. You can find her @PoetsandMuses and @ImogenArate on Twitter and Instagram.
