Ashley Hulsey Coutch | from Who the Mass Was Made of: For Victims of the Parkland Shooting

Ashley Hulsey Coutch is a poet residing in Birmingham, Alabama. She has been published in various magazines such as Aura, Astarte, Birmingham Poetry Review, and others. She won the Barksdale Maynard award for poetry at UAB, and went on to complete 2 years in University of Alabama’s MFA program in poetry under teachers such as Robin Behn and Thomas Rabbitt. She continues to meet with a group of poets monthly and is a member of the Sister City Collective. When not writing poetry she writes original songs and performs them with her band Cheshire Posssum.

Special Feature:
100 Thousand Poets for Change — Birmingham
Edited by Ashley M. Jones, Laura Secord, and Alina Stefanescu

Ashley Hulsey Coutch

from Who the Mass Was Made of: For Victims of the Parkland Shooting

III. Martin Duque The AR-15 ammunition, a .223 Remington Cartridge, travels at approximately 3,000 feet per second and causes a significant cavitation effect, where a bullet is traveling so fast it sends shockwaves through the body and severely damages or kills displaced tissue. Your eyes are liquid light, mercurial, inky moons reflected in your vernal face. Your black ballcap and black shirt say you are kempt, clean, following the rules we set before you like: always go to school! Born in Coyuca de Catalan, Guerrero, Mexico; you died in Parkland, Florida, United States of America. You were funny and sometimes shy. Fourteen years old. XVI. Aaron Feis The AR 15 is called the “barbie doll “of semi-automatic assault guns, because the average person can easily use and customize it. Your eyes are shaded by sunglasses as you stand at the corner of a park pavilion with blue, pink, and white balloons floating just past your cheek. Your body stance says it all, holding your baby girl firmly, yet gently with large hands and thick arms against the breast that caged your once beating heart. You: black shirt and sunglasses. She: pink and white ruffles. You look like a man who likes to be comfortable. Yet inside of you lived a man who would toss his body before his students to take the barrage of bullets.

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