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Monday, July 04, 2022

THIRTEEN DAYS ON “THE NRA CIVIL RIGHTS CALENDAR”



by Gilbert Allen

Blood On Their Hands _ Anti-NRA T-Shirt by Sarana Mehra

January 1

If the world seems cold

to you, perhaps

you’ve already fired.


January 6

Stop

the Magnetometers!


Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Guns don’t make the world

go round. Guns make

the rounds worthwhile.


Ash Wednesday

Praise the One before whom

thou needest no silencer.


April 1

We inherit our relatives, but

we can choose

our AR-15s.


Good Friday

It is more blessed to grieve

than to reprieve.


Memorial Day

Talk not of wasted

ammunition. Talk instead of those

you’ve wasted


July 4

Believe the worst

about everybody. That way

you don’t have to aim.


Labor Day

My bullets are Teflon.

My burden is light.


Halloween

Every boy

needs a blackbird

to shoot at.


Thanksgiving

Guns don’t kill turkeys.

Turkeys kill turkeys.


December 24

I am the ghost

of Kevlar passed.


New Year’s Eve

Some of us are like cannons: we don’t

like to be pushed, and we’re only happy

when loaded.



Gilbert Allen lives and writes in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. His most recent collection of poems is Believing in Two Bodies.