I asked all of our contributing writers to contribute to this week’s special feature on gun violence in America in their own words.  Poet Joshua Michael Stewart offers our readers this personal poetic expression; growing up with guns and unbridled violent culture in post-industrial Ohio. 

SQUEEZE

Cuckoo clocks ticked in every room of my mother’s house.

None told the right time, all fake. Latch and hinge—

open each face and you’d find a loaded pistol.

Two rifle cabinets in every bedroom, a dozen

shotguns draped in confederate flags behind beveled glass.

An assault weapon stashed inside a hollow wall.

“Don’t tell anyone what I showed you behind that wall,”

my stepdad said as we crept from a spare bedroom.

Fortify yourself. Shun the windows.

I was twelve when my brother pointed a snub-nosed

.38 at my face. He stood me against a wall,

outstretched the revolver, click.  Mom kept a derringer

on her nightstand beside her water glass. Latchkey kids,

the first thing we learned was how to unlock every gun case.

We were alone in the house. My brother could pick any lock.

The first time I fired a .22 I missed the empty soda can by a foot.

The second time I shot a .22 I blew a hole in my bedroom wall.

A neighbor called the police. I shot out his garage windows.

I didn’t think he’d know it was me in the John Wayne mask.

You’ll find this poem in the upcoming collection of poems by Joshua Michael Stewart, ‘Love Something’.