Akash MattupalLi
Shootings in America
We were talking about Death at the dinner table,
lightning and the stormy thunder buzzing faintly outside.
I was eating their zucchini bread with spread butter,
“Did you know that you could buy guns at Walmart?”
I thought I heard their dog whine behind us.
I was a military recruit when I first shot an assault rifle,
bullets in the magazine clanging like bells in Hindu temples,
I took in a deep breath and looked through the scope.
The target was moving, I was calm as a feather,
I pressed the trigger and the recoil nudged my shoulder.
I had hit the target, I became a marksman.
Why would they ever put guns in the hands of teenagers?
My friends told me of their suburban American schools,
the active school shooting drills they had to do,
hidden in corners of classrooms in the dark,
under chairs or tables, becoming roly-poly bugs.
“Does this happen in other countries?” one of them asked
me, my fear in middle school was about not fitting in,
not about being shot.
Mother says she’s terrified of going outside on her own.
“These crazy idiots with guns, they’ll shoot you,”
at times, it seems more likely to end up in a car crash
on Beltway 8, Houston’s reputation for bad drivers
being louder than the Lone Star Flag.
In this odd game of Russian roulette
do people bleed in Red, White, and Blue?
Terms like filibusters or caucuses or clotures or recesses
are thrown around as the shell casings of bullets fall.
The only time a white supremacist used the metric system
was before they squeezed the trigger.
