Poetry by Tanya Tuzeo
my men, with guns
an AR-15 is under the bed.
pressed aluminum curls up beneath
my sleeping child — an unwanted beast
brought home by father.
i didn’t say anything as he unzipped it
from a bright green bag
and posed — look babe!
when i was ten years old
my cousin was acquitted
for shooting sixteen rounds into a building.
each unit of ammunition seeking a body,
someone fleeing his wrathful pride.
holes in bedroom walls, hallways, and finally
into the transgressor.
my cousin bowed his head,
cried at the verdict — still a sheriff
stalking the glades of Miami.
now his son posts pictures
of his growing gun collection,
remarking on its killing power
in late night Facebook posts:
this one can take down a rhino, man!
he tags me on Youtube videos
where mass shootings
are animated by cartoon technology
and every gun owner is a hero — like my brother.
he was once a cop, until
petting his standard issue
glock: i just wanna kill these fuckers!
now he prowls the Catskill Mountains for bears,
the odd moose, other brown bodies
to do i don’t know what with.
my brother’s grenade
my brother’s room in our family vacation home
has embossed wallpaper, indigo or violet
depending on the light that filters through the mountains —
and his grenade in the closet.
i saw it looking for extra blankets,
thought it was an animal resting in eiderdown
kept by my mother in one of her tempers
but it didn’t move
and so
i picked it up.
inhumanity held beneath iron’s screaming core —
a pleasant weight,
like the egg i threw across the street
detonating onto the head of boy
who said i kissed him but i didn’t,
is it like that for my brother? —
fisted mementos of thrill?
seasoned by cedar sachets,
neatly quilted metal shimmered as i turned it
forbidden gem, his holy relic —
i placed it back in the closet and began making dinner,
said nothing.
the slender pin preserves this household
where our family gathers
unknowing a bomb is kept here —
my brother roasts a marshmallow
until it catches fire, turns black,
plunges into mouth.
Tanya Tuzeo is a librarian and mother to two children and two collections of unpublished poetry, “We Live in Paradise” and “Miserable People”. Her work appears in various literary publications, is a finalist in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest 2022 and longlisted in Frontier Poetry’s Nature & Place prize.
Arcturus 