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PORTSIDE CULTURE

BULLETS  
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Terry Adams
October 25, 2024
Portside
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_ Poet Terry Adams relates how a sensitive child might learn about
the intricate relationship between bullets and death. _

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At age five my 16 year-old cousin let me handle a bullet. He swore me
to silence, and would not speak while the bullet was there. I figured
I needed to ask women about bullets, things that would have made me
feel dumb around my cousin, things like "will bullets go through
skin?"even though I thought I knew, or should know. Dutifully my aunt
answered yes. Through paper? Yes again. Through a tree? Probably not.
Through a wall? Well, sometimes. And when Mother was preparing the
turkey for Thanksgiving, I wanted to see and hold the heart, because I
thought there should be a bullet hole in it somewhere. Amazed that I
wanted to touch the kind of thing I would usually consider much too
icky, she handed it to me slowly, and carefully, and squatted down
with me to look it over. The heart itself was bullet-shaped, tapered
and smooth at one end, the upper part sort of floppy, all of it
feeling slightly moist, and nothing like a valentine. I fingered it
all around, in awe, and found probably the remnant of the aorta, or
the pulmonary vein, and I remember I pronounced that that's where the
bullet went in. She said she didn't think they killed turkeys with
bullets because it would be too expensive and loud. This was a
completely new thought for me. I asked how, then? She said they
probably cut off the head. I asked what do they kill with bullets
then? She said big wild animals, or birds, or men in war. This was the
first inkling I had that death was more complicated than I thought,
possibly related to the fear of bears or alligators in the night, or
something men are quiet about, more than a matter of bullets, and
hearts, and even what’s on television.

_Terry Adams is a life-long poet with an MA in English and
wide-reaching experience in teaching, life, construction, and
performance. He MCs, with Joe Cottonwood, the La Honda Lit Night. He
restored and inhabits Ken Kesey’ s infamous home in La Honda. Visit
his website: terryadamspoetry.net
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* Poetry
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* Terry Adams
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* toxic masculinity
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* Militarism
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* war
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