Men either stare or pretend
she’s not there, the only
girl at the gun club. The earplugs
help — everything sunk to a hush.
Delicate, lipstick-shaped, she slips .22s
into the magazine, copper noses stacked.
Almost flimsy and light, it takes just
a slight click to send it in. But releasing
the bolt is a slam, a hard return,
just like her father told her.
She pastes her target on cardboard
at twenty-five feet,
and she has a can to pick up cooled brass.
Plans to clean the gun
at a friend’s house. No one down range,
and she knows her sights are straight.
One eye shut, a lean, a pause,
a holding of breath. And the trigger squeeze
like coaxing a moth on a silk thread.
She rips hole after hole
through the soft circles,
so dainty, like needlework, lace.
~ Amy MacLennan
Amy MacLennan has been published in ‘Hayden’s Ferry Review’, ‘River Styx’, ‘Linebreak’, ‘Cimarron Review’, ‘Painted Bride Quarterly’, ‘Folio’, and ‘Rattle’. Her chapbook, ‘The Fragile Day’, was released from Spire Press in the summer of 2011, and her chapbook, ‘Weathering’, was published by Uttered Chaos Press in early 2012.
