Tony Dawson

THE SIX-SHOOTER

So, a pretty young teacher tried to take
a handgun from a stroppy six-year-old.
The sort of incident that could happen
anywhere in the world, right?
Well, only if you share Americans’
traditional love-affair with firearms.

I imagine the cocky little kid pulling
back, holding the gun above his head
and imitating Charlton Heston’s drawl,
smirking, “From my cold dead hands”.
Then, pointing the gun at the teacher,
he coolly shot her in the abdomen.

Clutching the wound in a reflex action,
she lay bleeding on the floor, calling
to the other children to flee the class.
Yet people still react with shock
at such an event, immediately dredging up
the same old tired clichés: hearts reach out,
prayers and thoughts are with those
who are suffering, guns need to be kept
out of the hands of young people...
knowing full well that this is just the latest
in an endless series of gun-related incidents
in schools and that nothing will ever change.


Tony's YouTube video reading of "The Six-Shooter":



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Tony confesses: "The Republican-led Missouri state house voted against banning minors from openly carrying firearms on public land without adult supervision. Donna Baringer said police in her district did not want '14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St Louis carrying AR-15s. Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them. Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.'"

TONY DAWSON has lived in Seville since 1989. His writing has appeared in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Poems-for-All, Chiron Review, Pure Slush, and Loch Raven Review, as well as online at London Grip, The Syndic Literary Journal, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, Beatnik Cowboy, and Home Planet News.