He Buys a Revolver

Wendy Taylor Carlisle

A 9 MM is “quick and adept.” A shooter stands with his violent ears, in which devils are. The devils are we, the sad followers of the paranoid “what if.” Our leader, Satan, stands whispering in a little hidden section behind the tympani, behind the breathing meat in a visceral explosion of longing and terror, a confusion of focus.

This story has to be in someone else’s hand. I’m not brave enough to write out all this sadness. Moreover, this story has to be turned away from any beautiful dread, any sexy alarm, from excuses, from the biochemical shell game. The man-gun in this story is blank as le Chiffre, unmoored, drifting away from skin and heat, knowing without means, by need. The man in this story is not the other man; the gun is not one we do not own. We are all meat and millimeters. We are all at bay.


Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of Discount Fireworks and Reading Berryman to the Dog, both from Jacaranda Press, and most recently Persephone on the Metro from Mad Hat Books.

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