Kanchan Naik | Thoughts and Prayers | Poets Resist

Kanchan Naik is a junior at The Quarry Lane School in Dublin and the Teen Poet Laureate for he City of Pleasanton. Kanchan is the Youth Editor of the India Currents Magazine and the Editor-in-chief of Quarry Lane’s news-zine The Roar. When she’s not doodling or writing poetry, she is most likely untangling her earphones or looking for something that happens to be — much like herself — lost.

Also by Kanchan Naik:
Open Witches have Sweet Teeth To Proud Boys

Poets Resist
Edited by Len Lawson
August 16, 2020

Kanchan Naik

Thoughts and Prayers

Carpet the bottom of my tongue, mismatched against the bruised upholstery of a nation stitched to the sheepskin of a gun barrel. The woolen mouth coughs into the microphone — For the victims, for the families, for the responders, for… for the screams swallowed whole by the whirling cylinder of a semi-automatic, for the eyes pried open by the click of a trigger held captive, not wanting to see. See, the guns don’t kill people, people kill people. People kill people — it scratches down the back of my throat, the aftertaste of cotton country just enough to turn the other way before I digest the facts. The facts: the only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is the frayed selvage of American fantasy. No, my only gun is the mouth of this country choking as it speaks, spitting out sympathy. My sympathy, dedicated to those who watch that cylinder and realize only blood is measured by the weight of a circle.