THE GUN IN ITS HOLSTER
after Cornelia Parker’s “Landscape with Gun and Tree”
like a rifle leant against tree
in a winter wood, is just waiting
to go off. Look closely: decoy paisley
adorns the inlay, and one tear-shaped
dropper points a warning
from the sidelock. When held,
the trigger needs no convincing,
no embellishment, is as familiar
as the handle of that old
hunting knife handed
down from your father
as your great-grandfather’s
one good thing.
—Poets Respond
December 7, 2014
__________
Marjorie Lotfi Gill: “In a week where protests continue about the shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, Cornelia Parker’s ‘Landscape with Gun and Tree’ seems a fitting metaphor for both the genesis of violence and how our culture chooses to respond to it.”
