EV Noechel’s most recent poem to appear here was Dinosaurs (August 2012).

Tried it once
By EV Noechel

At the range, a significantly bored man looks past me
while the guns in the case between us speak of conflict.
A hundred muzzles, a hundred held
breaths, I feel the prickle of rapt attention
from every side. Fear, red and sharp
as a laser, holds my mouth shut surely as a gag.

Tired of waiting, my friends choose 
for me. “Something small. Give her a girl’s
gun.” I’m here to be open minded
among friends with faults and a thrill for explosion.
I watched the video, and politely ignored the misspelled
petition that elsewhere might
have evoked a derisive giggle
and a bulleted list of snarky rebuttals
ticked off on my left hand fingers.

But here my voice is flattened against the wall
of my stomach, frozen. I blink with every shot,
cringe an inch shorter. I snap around 180, alert as prairie dogs
to watch unblinking every time someone passes
behind me, gun in hand,
ready to shoot paper men to bits.