Rifle Making

i am looking for the boys

who grew big in the barrels of muskets

 

one in particular

who held hot steel in his eyes

drug his fingers down

the neck of the gun and

traced grooves to

spin bullets as they passed

i'll be a rifle someday

he'd say

 

if his mother was there

he'd have been scolded for putting those hands

in his mouth

for holding his larynx out

in front of him

for being a silly young boy

pushing grooves in his throat

so bullets would spin

if ever they passed

he was never

fired,

 

the flint was better to him at least

 

he had to listen

to his neighbors scratching

their throats into rifles

 

to explosions and then

the quiet where other boys

had been, in their guns

 

he scolded himself

in a handful of voices

 

for the vacancies

and carved larynx

for many times the evolutions

of weapons next to him.