Friday, January 4, 2013

Geometry of a Gun

Despite the recent news media chatter about a "fiscal cliff," the event that we can't (and mustn't) stop thinking about is the December 14 massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This draws me to a poem by Joan Mazza (whose poem "Digits" was featured earlier this week on New Year's Day); this new poem deals with the geometry of eggs and of bullets. Please think of gun control.

     Geometry Lesson       by Joan Mazza 

     In my old white enameled pot 
     I place seven fresh eggs, 
     cover with water. 
     Jiggle a little and they settle 
     point up, one in the center, 
     six circle around it. 
     My ex-husband showed me 
     this arrangement, rotated 
     the oiled metal cylinder, 
     explained why a revolver 
     always has six bullets. 

"Geometry Lesson" was previously published online in Wazee Journal; it was the Second Place winner in the contest for the Karma Dean Ogden Memorial Prize, Poetry Society of Virginia, 2009; and it appears on magnets on cars for The Living Poetry Project, 2012.

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