NEW #Poetry - TRADING FLESH FOR METAL - Austin Davis

TRADING FLESH FOR METAL
AUSTIN DAVIS

Trading Flesh for Metal

I.
I realized that poems nowadays
are measured by the lull between bullets
instead of a lover’s heartbeat
when I went to get my hair cut
at Supercuts by a woman
with a Pink Lady Handgun
staring me down from her hip.

The woman looked as if
she’d been attacked on her way to work
by the bubblegum monster
I used to draw on all my math worksheets
but she had a smile on her face,
something that was missing from me.

It’s SO CHIC-
my husband makes me take it
with me wherever I go
and at first I was against it
but then I got used to it
and now I feel SOOOOOO
safe and protected
and are you okay
because you look a little bit like
a skydiver wearing a paper parachute
who just noticed
he was a foot from the ground.

II.
Last year I had a vase
thrown at my head in Greer, Arizona
after I told a white man in white pants
that he was cleaning his assault rifle
as if it was a porcelain doll
because he felt naked without it,
not because of his OCD.
I told him that keeping
his bullets in a different room
will never stop them from crawling
under his pillow every night
and the man threw
his girlfriend’s vase at me.

If I wasn’t holding his gun right then,
the man would have shot me
and ended my life right there.
One moment would have shattered
into a million, but instead,
there was a silence
deeper than any grave.

The crickets
went back to their small talk,
the trees outside
held back their laughter,
and the scared old man
cried with his head on my shoulder
until morning.

III.
During March for Our Lives
almost a month ago
I watched Donald Trump
ride his motorcycle
to his Palm Beach Golf Course
and complain about
those young, shithead protesters
over a little wine and cheese
when just four years ago,
Trump had accused Obama
of “playing golf on the job.”

IV.
If saving 600 women
from being killed every year
because their insecure boyfriends
have small dicks
isn’t “part of the job,”
then I think we need to change
Trump’s job description
from ‘President’ to ‘orange cement.’

If standing between 2,555 children
and the bullet their fathers
forgot was in the rifle
isn’t “part of the job,”
then I think someone better add
“20% chance of death”
to the weather forecast
on the school announcements
every morning.

If preventing 13,000 homicides
and giving more than 35,000
Americans another day
to tell their girlfriends and boyfriends,
wives and husbands, sisters and brothers,
and mothers and fathers
that they love them
isn’t “part of the job,”
then I think we’re just letting
those who are malnourished of power
but are the least suited to hold it
trade our human flesh for metal.

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