Let’s have a party
and bring all of our guns.
We’ll have contests
to see who can shoot the target
all the way from the living room
to the backyard fence.
We’ll bring our rifles and see
who can shoot the most living things.
We’ll take out our pistols and see
who can draw the fastest.
We’ll shoot at each other’s feet
and call it dancing.
We’ll shoot off our machine guns
and see who finishes their ammo first.
We’ll cover the house with the flag
and practice shooting the stars
Then we’ll turn the guns on each other
— to protect ourselves from the enemy —
and when none of us is left
we’ll declare our country great again.
Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine, all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, the Writer’s Almanac and other publications. She is thrilled to have just retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.
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