Carrie Penrod – A Girl is a Gun

Mother of pearl encrusted handguns with silver shined
accents of filigree and slicked back hammer and trigger

or sometimes she is the bullet

                                    the entrance wound
                                    you never saw approaching

                                    the blood
                                    visceral with metaphor

                                    the stitch
                                    pulling at your skin


or sometimes she is the frayed flesh

                                    the exit wound
                                    you never thought would come

                                    the reverberation of sound
                                    her leaving

                                    the thought of violence
                                    against silence

 
or sometimes she is the finger that pulls


                                    the trigger
                                    eased back to rest

                                    the spatter
                                    you created

                                    the lodged remnant
                                    causing phantom pains

 
or sometimes she is just a girl
with a cocked back hair trigger
rage, fingers itching to rip
out those who hold her 
like a thing to be used. 

Previously published in Hecate Literary Magazine.

Carrie Elizabeth Penrod received her MFA from Mississippi University for Women. She currently resides in Indiana with her cats. Her work can be read at Anti-Heroin Chic, Sad Girls Club Lit, Prometheus Dreaming, Button Poetry’s Instagram, and corn stalks.