#some ether

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From Nick Flynn's book, Some Ether. [LitBowl]

[whatlightdoes]

My Mother Contemplating Her Gun

One boyfriend said to keep the bullets

locked in a different room.                                    Another urged            clean it or it could explode. Larry

thought I should keep it loaded under my bed,                     you never know.

           I bought it when I didn’t feel safe. The barrel                         is oily,

            reflective, the steel

pure, pulled from a hole                      in West Virginia. It

could have been cast into anything, nails along the carpenter’s lip, the ladder

to balance the train. Look at this, one                        bullet,

                       how almost nothing it is—

            saltpeter   sulphur   lead   Hell

burns sulphur, a smell like this.                        safety & hammer, barrel & grip

            I don’t know what I believe.

I remember the woods behind my father’s house          horses beside the quarry

stolen cars lost in the deepest wells, the water below            an ink waiting to fill me.

                     Outside a towel hangs from a cold line            a sheet of iron in the sky

           roses painted on it, blue roses.

Tomorrow it will still be there.

[cdnsongbirdme]

Nick Flynn, "Radio Thin Air," from Some Ether: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2000)

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