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Callaloo 27.2 (2004) 385



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Mercy


            And my father took me to some woods
Outside the town I thought was already too familiar,
Already too small, and he brought along a shotgun
He would be leaving behind—a 12-gauge,
Comfortable against the length of my arm,
Straight as an eye eager for its aim.
Keep it firm against your shoulder, he warned,
And watch out for its kick. And I who thought already
I was careful enough, and knew more than everything,
Sighted myself at the tin can he set on a tree stump.
I pulled the trigger, noticing its give—not too light,
But not heavy—and the shotgun lurched
Back against my right shoulder, nearly knocking me down;
And I gave the gun back, swallowing what I knew

Could be a sob, betrayed by the shotgun and my body.
It was almost the last time I have fired a gun.
It stayed unloaded in my father's closet while he was away,
And after he returned from Vietnam, and had retired,
My mother had him keep it on the back porch behind the freezer.
We forgot it was there. But a few years ago, after my mother died,
It became clear how far my father's mind had gone.
We had to take away his car keys; keep him from getting lost.
We also had to think how he could hurt himself
Without knowing, or someone else during furious fits.
I found the gun and loaded it again against my shoulder,
Still impressed. The trigger itched to be kicked, making me see
The misery my father wandered through was just no way
To live, and not the way I would have him die.


Forrest Hamer is the author of Middle Ear, winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award, and Call & Response, winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award. His work has appeared in many journals and has been anthologized in Poets Choice: Poems for Everyday Life, The Geography of Home: California's Poetry of Place, Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature, and the 1994 and 2000 editions of The Best American Poetry. Hamer is a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA.


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