The Year in Review Through Prose Poetry

Pew Pew (The Gunstringer)

Thumb pointed skyward. Pinky and ring fingers curled in, hugging the palm. Middle and pointer digits extended, erect, dead-set. 

Like cowboys and Indians when I was young, running in circles around the house to make the yard feel infinite in length. How we would argue over who shot who and how long we would have to play dead before getting up again.

Years later, I had a friend in high school who would walk through the halls making this particular sign with his hand, pointing at random students, and quickly lifting his forearm as if to say, “Bang.” Socially alienated as I was, I did not find this kind of behavior objectionable. He was a good enough kid, even if he did eventually get expelled for threatening to show the vice principal a real gun. Anyway, we all had problems. The point is, this kind of thing was a game to him, an amusement.

Today, in front of the television, I fire invisible bullets at a shooting gallery of digital threats, thinking of childhood games and high school angst, aware for maybe the first time of the silliness of the gesture but also of the very real power it represents.