"A Gun is A Gun is A" by Emma Bolden from SEQUESTRUM

Today's poem is by Emma Bolden

A Gun is A Gun is A

freeze circling the circle that napes her neck where once she felt the steel of his lips is
the steel & the lips is the red laser walking a target up each step of spine
on the back of a boy because the skin on his bones is brown is the body as its bones
hovered up & walked through air is the bloom we use as a metaphor to excuse
the bruise is a shock of purple is the broke blood vesseling through the body
the idea that forgiveness is compulsion is forgiveness as command is the child
dead is the child dead is the song of my country anything but the song of a mother
calming her child before firing is it precious in the eyes of the lord the death of his
beloved? is a zero righteous between two eyes is nothing like a hammer or a nail
is a machine made to hasten the production of corpses is a machine made to drain
the name from the body is a machine made to make the body into a number then multiply
by exponent is the mouth of a god the shooter created to bullet himself into god
is a blue shaking fifty stars loose is anger & incisor is wolfbane is hemlock is sewing a voice
to the void is a sentence unworded is a needle ticking the distance between blacktop and coffin
is a pine forest felled to build boats to ship our babies down is
poison as passage is a pennyless eyelid is a pupil watching the river widen
into an unwished eternity is foot severed from step is child- severed from -like
is the flag shaking off its stripes is the boy's mouth made into absence a country
unnamed by its silence as much as its rage

Copyright © 2025 Emma Bolden All rights reserved
from Sequestrum
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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