February 2022
Bio Note: After a decade, I still count myself very lucky to live on the North Carolina coast - even though the King Tide destroyed our deck last November, and sometimes, as per this poem, Valentine's Day isn't celebrated quite as I would wish. This poem will appear in my poetry book, To Drink from a Wider Bowl, that won Evening Street Press' Sinclair Prize and is coming out in April.
Brothers-in-Arms Valentine’s Day Gun Sale
(advertised in The Island Sun)
In a world where young men in prison explain they didn’t plan to kill, they were just angry and the gun was there, In a world where guns are always there, a world that isn’t the world but a small piece of world that believes guns belong everywhere, In a small piece of world trying so hard to protect smallness, where you only belong if you look like me, live like me, hate like me, In that small piece of world a gun can become a Valentine.
Originally published in Rise-Up Review, Summer 2021
©2022 Joanne Durham
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