Ammo

Ammo

$28.99 for 20 rounds at GlockWorld.com.

At less than $1.50 per round, $9.00 buys you

a dead 3^rd grader in Tucson, a dead judge,

a dead 79-year-old great-grandmother,

a dead community outreach worker,

two dead retirees.

You can tell what they have

in common.

For a buck-and-a-half you can put

a congresswoman into ICU with hole

through left lobe and part of skull removed.

Owns a Glock herself. “I’m a pretty good

shot,” she once told the Times.

Yesterday I bought 3 undershirts at Penney’s.

Cost all of the above and then some —

a schoolteacher’s worth, a mechanic,

maybe my next-door neighbor.

No getting around it, costs a lot these days

to live.

In 2011 nineteen people, including U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, were shot by a single gunman in the parking lot of a supermarket in Arizona. Six people died.

Gas Up

Bone-dry Subaru, SUV, Ford-tough truck

all hooked

up to unleaded IVs dosing the ravenous veins.

Attending humans

unmasked, ungloved, look away, almost

incidental.

Human thinks how odd to find a minute

here suspended.

Some part of him is waiting for

$15 per gallon,

so the price won’t matter anymore,

and the cost will.

Digits flip manic as a slot in Vegas

or Awkwesasne.

Human looks blank as pavement.  Mind

clunks.  Full

stop.  From the stolid pump, eventually

nothing cascades.

Credit receipt emerges like a tongue

stuck out slow.

Says how ‘bout that, says we all

return to fossil

by and by. Says have a nice day.

David Cavanagh (dcavanagh100@gmail.com) http://dcavanagh.net