Today's poem is by William Fargason

House Made of Guns
       

In the house made of guns in the city
made of guns on the street lit with lead,

my father sits building a new room.
This is to be my room, with a scope

for a window, the crosshairs
of white wood across the glass

framing the yard with the hollowed-out
pine tree crooked from the last storm.

I watch him as I always did as a child,
through a crack in the door. He is good

with his hands, could take apart
any machine you gave him

and learn how to put it back together
in breaking it down. He sands the wood

of my doorframe which will hold
a door I will hide behind years later.

My father's tongue is the trigger
of the gun in the house made of guns.

My mother and my sister and I
wait for the primer to be dimpled

by the firing pin like a thumbprint
left in the sand. The whole house is

cocked and waiting for the first shot
of the morning. My father is smiling,

or maybe wincing, deep in his work.
I walk the golden floor made

of bullet casings. What happens
when you live in violence so long

that it's what you call home? This house
must fall. I will flip the safety off

every gun. I will aim each barrel into
another. I won't kneel in the shadows

when he says kneel. I will taste
gunpowder on my tongue.

Copyright © 2025 William Fargason All rights reserved
from Velvet
Curbstone Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission