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.
