Meditation at Fifty Yards, Moving Target

Safety First. Never point your weapon, keep your finger off the trigger. Assume a loaded barrel, even when it isn’t, especially when you know it isn’t. Glocks are lightweight but sensitive; the Keltec has a long pull and a kick. Rifles have penetrating power, viz.: if the projectile doesn’t lodge in its mark, it will travel some distance until it finds shelter; it will certainly pierce your ordinary drywall partition. You could wound the burglar and kill your child sleeping in the next room, all with one shot. Open Air. Fear, of course. Then the sudden pleasure of heft—as if the hand had always yearned for this solemn fit, this gravitas, and now had found its true repose. Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it— squeeze between heartbeats. Look down the sights. Don’t hold your breath. Don’t hold anything, just stop breathing. Level the scene with your eyes. Listen. Soft, now: squeeze. Gender Politics. Guys like noise: rapid fire, thunk-and-slide of a blunt-nose silver Mossberg, or double-handed Colts, slugging it out from the hips. Rambo or cowboy, they’ll whoop it up. Women are fewer, more elegant. They prefer precision: tin cans swing-dancing in the trees, the paper bull’s-eye’s tidy rupture at fifty yards. (Question: If you were being pursued, how would you prefer to go down— ripped through a blanket of fire or plucked by one incandescent fingertip?) The Bullet. dark dark no wind no heaven i am not anything   not borne on air   i bear myself   i can slice the air   no wind can hold me   let me   let me go   i can see   yes o aperture o light   let me   off go off   straight is my verb   straight my glory road   yes   now i can   feel it the light i am flame   velocity o beautiful body i am coming i am yours before you know it i am home