Alison Granucci is a poet, writer, and woodland gardener living in the Hudson Valley. In 2005, she founded Blue Flower Arts, the first U.S. literary speaker’s agency to represent poets, and upon retiring in 2020 began writing her own poetry. She has work published or forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Great River Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, and Little by Little, the Bird Builds Its Nest (Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid), an anthology by Paris Morning Publications. A 2022 graduate of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program, Alison serves a reader for The Rumpus. On the topic of gun violence, she’s published two essays: “Straight to the Head” (Turning Wheel), and “Shot into Life” (ReVision), which received an Honorable Mention in The Best Spiritual Essays (1997). Follow Alison on Instagram @alisongranucci
THEY SAY IT WAS RANDOM
You’re lying on the floor next to a good friend
when you hear the soft rustle of pillow
like the one your mother used to swaddle you as a child,
this one used by the man standing behind you
to smother the sound of gun, a soothing cushion for him
to cover his lover’s mouth,
when out of the corner of your eye
you see your friend arch her back
away from hard floor then back
& in that flash you know nothing
in life is random.
It’s true when your eyes are closed, it’s dark.
But when I opened my eyes it was darker.
This is how I learned to see.
PRAYER
Lord, O My Lord, if Death is not the god
I can most believe in, what is? We are animal
bodies on an animal earth — from Death we come
and to Death we return. Here, then
there. Some thread remains. The green-blossom pearly mussel
is extinct yet I do not believe in the end stop
Lord, O my Lord, if I did not forgive the stranger who came to my door
in the moment of his shooting me I swear the bullet was still mid-air
I could not have gone on living. Against that edge of fluke: one-sixteenth of a millimeter
between bullet & brain face down in the landscape of rug, I still push —
the way I’d pushed him instinctual my small body fierce against animal —
when he pulled the gun.
Still, he walked over & through the edge of door
I unlocked.
O, I do believe in Before & After.
Lord, O my Lord, was forgiveness the prayer that linked us?
the amazing thing: forgiveness happened
What else could have collapsed that wall of fear?
I didn't ask to forgive; I just did
Or is “prayer” just another word for “staying here?”
what my body knew it had to do to survive
Now I push word after word after out of this pen.
I am here, alive
in a world of tables and chairs and kitchen windows.
I haven’t seen a bobolink in years.
Lord, O my Lord, when my pen is inkless
I ask of you only this: let it run dry on a line
enjambed
BULLET BODY
with a line by Linh Dinh
How the shooter says, “With this gun I am not afraid to . . . ” How the poet says, “Don’t say, ‘The bullet yawed…’ Say, ‘The bullet danced inside the body.’”
How I say, “My body, prostrate and praying was holy with the bullet in the body.”
How the body says, “Dance? Did the bullet say dance?!”
How the dance says, “Watch me twist & turn & burn with the tumble of the bullet body.”
How the bullet says, “My tumble touched your temple body, yes, it blessed your sweet head.”
How the head says, “No, your goddamn godless gun body blew a hole in my skull.”
How the hole says, “Now I wear a crown of red. Yes, I am a holy body.”
How the holy says, “Once released, the empty shell is nothing but a ghost body.”
How the ghost says, “Forever in stillness, my spirit fills you. You can let it haunt or guide you.”
WHAT OF THE GUN
THE SHOOTER LEAVES SAN DIEGO, FEBRUARY 10, 1990
mom lashed out again,
been sleeping on the street again
the cops keep circling
the kids keep kicking
I con a few bucks, pretend
to be a homeless vet
that always gets a couple of 10s
put down 16 for a bed again
at the plaza — can’t keep a job
fixing cars the guys just stare
can’t stand being
home with mom
just have to split again
get away from 4th and Broadway
all the voices in my head
just got that urge
to drift again wearing my Harley t-shirt,
got my Harley jacket, bandana round my head,
never bother
to comb my hair — just look right
through my eyes in the mirror
VA card’s in my pocket, conned it
somehow, I mean, who thought
I’d go to that jungle war
when I’ve got a jungle in my head
just gotta get on that Peter Pan
bus to anywhere
never been east before, damn
better tell mom
I’m going
when I deserted the Marines in ’73,
mom told them ‘AWOL from his mind’
but the split in me knows
just what I’m doing
faking flashbacks to Nam
always gets me a room and food
at the VA hospital wherever I am
off the bus in Yuma Arizona
used to live here
know there’s no law here
keeps someone like me
from buying a gun
now I’ve got a snub-nosed
.38 in my pocket
concealed, like me
on the bus
got a ticket to Vermont
be there in a week
THERE WAS WHEN I WAS BEFORE
The abyss —
Those are two words
to start a poem
but why not
start there
I mean, why not start
with the hole
that the bullet —
But no, let’s not start there
let’s start before the bullet
when the air was still pure
Before the pointed cylinder of lead
yawed on its trajectory to my —
but no, let’s not start
there
there was a time when I was a child
and played with childish things
Let’s start with the gun
look into that black hole
let it draw the bullet back
let its mouth inhale the thing whole
there was a time when I was
Before the gun
let’s start with the door
there was a knock on the door
I opened the door
But before the door
let’s start with my name
or, wait, was it his name
let’s start with “Can I give you my —
there was
when I was
before my name.