I was trying to write the other day when our gun-loving neighbors who live on a farm across the road began their monthly target practice. Blam-blam-blam. My neighbors aren’t hunters, but they maintain that having a gun and knowing how to shoot is a necessary skill.
When I first moved back to a farm in Virginia, I thought about purchasing a gun. I was afraid of the wildlife in a way I had never been, mostly because the animals weren’t afraid of me. Bears toured the outside of our house and pressed their paws against the windows. They played with the lawn furniture, and once, tried to open a door, leaving claw marks in the wood. On autumn evenings they lay back on the hillside above our house, tossing acorns in their mouths like popcorn. Coyotes strolled down our dirt road in the middle of the day and looked at us nonchalantly, as if to ask, “Why are you here?” They kept us up at night with their yip-yip howls. One day, a fox walked so close to me when I was gardening, I was afraid it might have rabies. Another day a skunk ambled up to me and hissed, as if to say, Get out of my way. Needless to say, I did. Then there was the copperhead that nested in my compost. I quickly made another compost heap, only to have it settle there instead.
The man who leased our fields said he wasn’t comfortable with me not owning a gun. He came by one day with a carload of what he called “my babies” and proceeded to teach me how to shoot. “Now this one is my pretty girl,” he said about one. “And this here is my son.” The lesson didn’t go well. I didn’t know he was handing me a loaded gun. We were lucky no one got killed. Before he left, I told him guns and poets don’t mix. I was thinking about local poet, Gregory Orr, who accidentally shot his brother when he was a boy.
Then, a few weeks ago, I picked up the book, Baltimore Sons, by Dean Bartoli Smith. Based on his Baltimore childhood, Smith’s collection reminded me of the TV series, The Wire. I don’t think I’ve ever read so many gun poems—poems with titles like: “The Stickup,” “Pistol Range,” “Cap guns,” “Pure Shooter,” “Bullet Fragments,” “.45,” “.375,” “Snipers,” “Shooting Gallery,” “My Father’s Shotgun Sale,” “Shotgun,” “One Blow to the Brain.” Nevertheless, I read the book from cover to cover without pausing—it’s a surprisingly tender read. The poems tell stories of a broken childhood, a broken city, broken American promises and dreams. And the love of guns.
Cash for Guns, 1975
Sunday mornings, bitter cold—
my father turned in
the Remington 700 deer rifle
he’d won selling spark plugs
in an Esso sales contest.
Before the divorce, I’d sneak
into my parent’s closet, unzip
the rawhide sleeve and lift
the rifle out. Peering
through the scope,
I aimed the heavy gun
at the floor, pulled the trigger.
Dad was behind
on his child support.
He needed fifty bucks
for food. I watched him walk
slowly to the police station,
cradling the rifle like a son.
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Author: Nin Andrews
