Why to Save the World
       

We need to begin by shooting
                people, leaders who lead
                by a leash the property

they call theirs, a friend says. My son
                wants me to carry a little
                pistol because men still

haven't learned that I am my own
                smoking embers to tend.
                At this table with a burger

& a beer I am more still than I've been
                in months, even when I wonder
                which of the sadfaced boys

passing in their hunt for Pokémon
                might be the one to hold
                a jagged blade to my throat.

I'm trying to remember how it felt
                to walk so close beside someone
                you let a bit of your weight fall

to them. Alone, you always listen
                to the new couple or old friends
                & feel them lie to each other,

performing themselves. I still hear
                the scream from the woman
                in the front row wearing the

president's brains after the sound
                the gun makes saves the silence
                from itself. We are all worried

we've forgotten something. One man
                leaves his drink at the bar & never
                wonders when he comes back if

someone drugged him while he pissed.
                Our hearts beating, our lungs
                pumping—we think of them as

often as we think how miles of asphalt
                might feel like duct tape
                over your gagged mouth.

On this birthday I wish to be invisible
                & to make this row full of men
                own my body, make them feel

living with a leash no one sees, tethered
                to threat. I don't want to forget
                my mother died on a bathroom

floor or to pretend our Earth is not
                in a constant state of ache—
                a body in pain being a body

under control. The gunshot echoes again.
                Who would we shoot first? What
                happens to a face the bullet owns?

How can a woman drink so much
                vodka her daughter could pass
                her on the street & never know?

Body of our bodies, we are becoming
                strangers. We each live at the edge
                of a wall we should never look over.

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Copyright © 2020 Lisa Fay Coutley All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission