i submitted this to Rattle, Poets Respond the other week
after the shootings on a kentucky highway
poets respond - Poets Respond® | Rattle: Poetry
I kill
By Mike Hammer
Squatted in the woods
On a Kentucky roadside
My AR style rifle showers front windshields in on drivers and blows out tires
A man emerges from his car to inspect his tire and I marvel at the tiny hold that appears in the man’s neck, and the huge amount of blood that begins to flow out of it
I did that
I put a new mag in my AR and hit a woman in the arm, she spins and yelps with pain
Her eyes search the horizon for the cause of the pain, the reason
I shoot her in the right eyeball
The eyeball explodes and the eye socket becomes a crater
Her body collapses down in a heap, next to the man who is strewn out on the ground and still trying to stop the blood rushing out of his neck
Now other people from the cars stopped along the highway come to look
There are about a dozen cars I have stopped and more are slowing down, rubberneckin
Concerned
It is the last thing they will be concerned about
2 men I kill with headshots
1 woman I shoot in the calf
As all the other people hustle out of their cars and start to run away I shoot people - like target practice, like killing cattle, like culling a herd, cause someone has to- in the back of the legs, or the back of the arm, of the back of the head, or in the lower back
The people are now running beyond my range
some fall bout I am not sure if I hit them or where
I spray off a few dozen more bullets then pack my rifle away
I turn and pick up my backpack, full of supplies
And I start my hike into the woods
Leaving those on the highway dead and dying behind me
screaming in pain
Some of their ghosts chase me
As I hike deeper into the woods
The ghosts make a horrid noise and smell and I’m not sure if I can kill them
But I’ma try
