Even though the soldier on the Tactical Weapons cover
      is pointing his locked and loaded ‘extreme beast CQ LWRC 5.56IC – PSD’

right at me, I doubt he intends me any harm.
      With his arsenal of readiness, he’ll be helpful to have around

when the apocalypse arrives. Moving on, I notice the cover
      of Western Hunter which sports

another Anglo-American square-jawed hunk,
      this one crouched beside an enormously dead elk,

looking victorious as if he’s just pulled up a tree
      stump at the Kill Your Own Dinner Café, where, if need be,

he will consume the entire meal raw. Flipping through a few pages,
      I come across him again inside

posing jauntily now beneath a galaxy
      of antlered animal heads in his killer man-cave, where,

along with the eye candy on the wall,
      are tips on how to create your own big hunter game room.

Next shelf over, World of Firepower’s July offering,
      who leaves little to the imagination in a black tee shirt

which is about to rip apart under the strain
      of his grapefruit size biceps, appears to be shooting

his way out of a bunker with the VT16 Executive POW 38
      wedged against his hip.

Admiring his confidence and neatly trimmed facial hair,
      I can imagine skinning a varmint together

under a darkening sky, a sky with a cold shoulder,
      just the two of us. But I find myself equally attracted

to the whitewater kayaker on the cover of Survivor’s Edge
      who, though no weapon in hand, obviously has the rutabagas

to decapitate a moose with five inches of dental floss
      and is promising to tell me how to select the right chickens,

prepare for mayhem, beat winter’s wrath, stock up
      on Armageddon essentials and plan my end of civilization

evacuation strategy. The carnivores inside him are restless,
      and the promise of mass carnage gleams like a knife

between his perfect teeth.
      I put the kayaker back down, wondering how to tell him

that I spend my afternoons pawing like an antelope in search
      of something green to fortify my journey

across the frozen north following herds that are migratory, uncertain
      in the way of one who has traveled many years

without a flock. I am an old coot with a bent wing,
      a nightjar caught in morning light, numerous of my kind –

mylodon, wooly mammoth, glyptodon, camelops, flightless megapode,
      rendered extinct when civilization was still a damp fire

on the horizon, pointless and useless, broiled, seared,
      atomized, and fossilized for scrap with mere rocks and spears.

Like missing kids, their sad little faces are everywhere, their eyes ponds
      that drown us over and over in their fading light. And yet…

so much more man power remains to be explored inside the pages
      of Concealed Carry, Gun World, Recoil, Combat Handguns,

Ballistic, Off the Grid, Doomsday, S.W.A.T., Tactical Gear,
      Combat Arms, Automatic Re-loader, Knives and Home Defender,

as the little conveyor belt keeps moving along our broccoli,
      our frozen pizzas, our beer bellies and our domestic animal parts,

somewhere on the poles another iceberg needs defrosting, and the parking lot
      outside with its ordinary acts of kindness and brutality awaits.

 

Marilee Richards’ collection The Double Zero (which includes this poem) has won this year’s May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and will be published by Bauhan Publishing in 2019.