Alicia Winokur | they want her to carry a gun | Poets Resist

Poets Resist
Edited by Sarah Ghoshal
January 25, 2019

Alicia Winokur

they want her to carry a gun

massachusetts has the lowest rate of

gun violence in the country

we are dead last in a human arms race

i’m more likely to get shot while

my skin crisps on waikiki beach or

wiping out on a ski slope in stowe

than if i got into a fight about the sox

on the red line

but have you ever / loved a teacher? / i mean known a teacher / loved a teacher you knew / seen them outside of school / watched them take off their / teacher mask / put their red pen away / become human again

(i promise, they do not sleep under the desks waiting for the morning bell

or hang upside-down from supply closets like vampires who want to flunk your kids)

i once heard my sister stub her toe. she cried

for twenty minutes, her voice curdled, her teensy nose and sharp eyes

scrunched up making a baby face incapable of dealing with the mildest of slights

from the sharp-cornered world

they want her / to carry / a gun

i watched her assemble furniture from ikea with my father:

the mute instructions conquered them they couldn’t tell their luröys from their lönsets

and my sister handed my father a phillips-head instead of a flathead —

twice! the bed always squeaked after that

they want her / to carry / a gun

she teaches history. high school history, post-revolutionary history

talks about duck-and-cover PSAs and the red scare while

a lockdown drill card stares her down from the

back of her slender classroom door

they want her / to carry / a gun

my sister told me one of her students came to her. tiptoed

around saying his parents were abusing him

(lest he get them in trouble) he has her phone number just

for emergencies

they want her / to carry / a gun

and i know / my dumbass sister / with her bleeding heart / and her / older-sister-all-knowing / save-the-world / attitude / she would / with her 5 feet flat self / play every position / on the classroom gridiron / to protect / your dumbass / snot-nosed / wonderful kids / who she loves / more than you / could ever love / a gun