My Father Teaches Me How to Handle a Pistol

Twin Rugers resting side by side

on the emerald felt. “For the Good Times”

playing low through evening’s kitchen

into my hesitant hand & swallows

the last of the Malbec, his stained lips

cracking into a rare authentic smile.

He cannot imagine the first gun

I held belonged to a boy who loved me

too much when he pointed it my way,

his grandmother, Elsie, lives now

to terrorize him. I think about her,

working in those Moulton fields,

13-hour days. How tough she must

have been living alone with two

of the meanest men in our family

pretty yellow Negro, the men say,

so poor her mule had no name.

Its ribs visible across the field

where she stood watching

her father-in-law, Spence,

beat blood & foam from it.

When I learn to lock the lever

& look down the chamber,

I think of her: oiled pistol

exhausted at her dirt-stained thigh,

hand on her hip. Insouciant

& tired. Just tired. Don’t ever

put your finger on the trigger

unless you’re ready to pull it . . .

my father says, so I keep it straight . . .

unless you’re ready to know

the power a propelled bullet

leaves in your hand. . .

I learn what she was tested by

to get eyes like this—old

enough to hold a bullet still.