By Holly Day
PROMPT—No one noticed ...
she held the gun in her hand and imagined
she was the prostitute she’d read about in the newspaper
knew that if she was that prostitute and she’d had this gun
there was no way those boys would have done to her
those things they did. she pulled the trigger and a hole
appeared in the paper target. if she’d been that prostitute
this hole would be in a person that needed to stop
there would be one boy on the ground and his friends
would say “Oh shit! Oh shit! She shot him!”
and she would say something like “You bet I did, motherfuckers.”
or something suitably badass and scene-appropriate.
she pulled the target off and held it up for appreciation.
the good ol’ boy standing next to her grunted something
about cluster patters and kill shots and she wished
she’d aimed more shots at the target’s nuts, because
a nice, tight cluster pattern of bullets around a paper target’s crotch
would probably have shut the good ol’ boy up, too.
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Analog SF, Cardinal Sins, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and The Muse Writers Center in Virginia. Holly writes from Minneapolis, MN.
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