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A Trigger Doesn't Pull Itself |
A bitter Virginia winter had just begun to fade
and cherry blossoms swelled along tree branches.
While his first victim clung to sleep
Cho loaded his gun
that he had no trouble buying
no, because a trigger doesn’t pull itself, so they say
it was a normal, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary gun sale, so they say
Thirty-one students on the cusp of adulthood -
one professor who’d survived the Nazis and
beaten back cancer death -
All succumbed to the boy who pulled the trigger
And who could know what maggots had
already taken up residence in his brain,
what howling Medussas, what razor-toothed demons
crept on their bellies along his bloodstream?
Icicles melted, maples flared red and orange-
one news correspondent suggested that
it was a societal issue,
best left to psychologists to sort out
Because a trigger doesn’t pull itself,
so they say
it takes a person with dead eyes
an icy soul and rabid squirrels in his head
to squeeze the trigger
it takes years of neglect, wrong diagnoses
to load this gun
to squeeze this trigger
to hunt down him and him and her
with the cold calculation of a mercenary
And boys don’t lose their minds alone
And college isn’t supposed to look like this
And whose fault is this,
And where is the exit, anyway?
copyright 2009
Nika
Cavat |
