Today's prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "express" poem (in any sense of the word you prefer), and "write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be." Without further comment, here is mine:
My Dad Teaches Me to Shoot
I’m twelve, lying prone on the ground,
elbows propped, holding a .22 rifle,
while my father tells me how to squint
and sight the paper target 50 yards away.
“Don’t yank the trigger,” he says,
“Squeeze it slowly, like a tube of toothpaste.”
I tighten my grip and there’s a loud crack
as the wooden gunstock mule-kicks my shoulder.
It’s not toothpaste, but a small lead missile
flying at the speed of sound,
capable of ripping into paper and wood,
but also skin, muscle, bone, organs.
“Not bad,” he says, and I peer through the sight
to see a hole about an inch from the black bulls-eye.
He shows me how to reload and I squeeze off
a few more shots. “What do you think?” he asks.
I can’t express all that I’m feeling, but I hand
the weapon back to him. “It’s okay,” I say.
It was one of many times I would disappoint him.
I never held another firearm again.
elbows propped, holding a .22 rifle,
while my father tells me how to squint
and sight the paper target 50 yards away.
“Squeeze it slowly, like a tube of toothpaste.”
I tighten my grip and there’s a loud crack
as the wooden gunstock mule-kicks my shoulder.
It’s not toothpaste, but a small lead missile
flying at the speed of sound,
capable of ripping into paper and wood,
but also skin, muscle, bone, organs.
to see a hole about an inch from the black bulls-eye.
He shows me how to reload and I squeeze off
a few more shots. “What do you think?” he asks.
I can’t express all that I’m feeling, but I hand
the weapon back to him. “It’s okay,” I say.
I never held another firearm again.
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