Submarine
The music box was made of bullets
in a defy-laws-of-physical way.
Whenever I heard a gunshot
my dad would say, “oh that’s just your sister
playing her music box.” I don’t have a sister
and the music box is made of thunder and fingernails.
I miss my tongue. It’s cutting itself
on the rim of a soda can. I drink carbon
like water. I catch bullets like wasps.
I use duct tape on the hole
in the wall of the submarine. The water
is coming. The water is already here.
Debris
Outside today I came upon a dead deer.
It was crumpled like the rubble of an old house.
What was the last thing you saw dismantled?
A question is a way of telling the reader
“I want to implicate you in this poem.” Sometimes,
a man selling guns comes to my door and tells me
I need protection. I can’t tell if he’s threatening me.
If he is then I will need to buy a gun from him.
A sign hums on a porch and it says
“It takes an average of 22 minutes for 911 to respond to a call.
It takes an average of 13 seconds for me
to fire my gun.” The sign is
afraid. Forgive me for my realism, music box.
I only wanted to tell a fairy story and here we are
in American again.
Perpendicular
The crystal shop is selling ammunition now.
Bullets made of jade. Bullets made of sapphire. Bullets
made of bone. Elk bone. Deer bone. Alligator bone.
Some of these are not practical but a bullet’s job
has never about practicality. The bullet is an instrument
for puncture. How will you get to the other side
of a canvas of flesh? Whose name will appear
written into your skin when you wake up from
from your last hallucination?
Robin Gow is a trans poet and young adult author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books 2020) and the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press 2019). Their first young adult novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions is forthcoming March 2022 with FSG Books for Young Readers. Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, Southampton Review, and Yemassee. They live in Allentown Pennsylvania with their queer family and two pug dogs and work at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. Check out what they’re up to at robingow.com.
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