Valerie Loveland

THE SECOND AMENDMENT DOESN'T APPLY

The gesture: thumbs up
and pointing simultaneously.
A finger is always loaded,
but with what kind of bullets?
Where do you buy ammo
for a fingergun? He amassed plenty
of ammunition after living with me

for so long. The weapon holstered
in a leather glove, then cocked
like a knuckle crack.
If he shot me with a fake gun,
why am I on the floor?
I can't stand but I make my eyelids flutter.
If I was killed with a fake gun,

then I'm fake dead. I would have defended
myself, but it was just a hand.
Besides, my only idea was to plug
the muzzle with my finger.
I can't remember if he actually
said "Bang Bang!" So easy to shoot
a thing he'd been carrying all his life.

Valerie Loveland is the author of Reanimated, Somehow (Scrambler Books, 2009). Her poetry appeared in Best of the Web Anthology 2008 and was featured at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She is an optician apprentice, and lives in Massachusetts.