What to Do With Our Guns, by Morgan Ray

St. Francis of the Guns, by Beniamino Bufano (USA, b. Italy) 1968. Photo by Rob Corder, via Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

What to Do With Our Guns
 
First, disassemble them, 
saw off the tips, remove the clips,
unhinge the hammers.
Now give the parts to people
who make art, like Al Farrow
who created a divine rendition
using guns and spent ammunition, 
a gothic cathedral
with barrel columns, 
spires of shotgun shells, 
butt ends of casings arranged
as a rose glass window. 
 
Yes, give these weapons to artists, I say, 
let them play, force on us 
a new perspective, provoke
awe and inspire reflection.

Melt that metal down
into something more profound

like Bufano did in the 60s,
1,968 guns turned in, reforged
to make St. Francis, nine feet tall,
outstretched arms in peaceful greetings,
robes inlaid with mosaics faces
of murdered American leaders.
Install him on a college campus
as guardian monk, bulwark
against all this madness.
 
What if we gave up our guns  
to make metal-toed boots 
for shoeless refugees, 
or cooking pots to simmer
a stew for the starving 
or exchanged the bullet lead 
for pencils instead? 
Let’s use our weapons to build 
a plane shaped like an angle, charter it
for a return trip, bring back
our untimely departed. 
 
Morgan Ray

Morgan Ray was born in Utah. She lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for four decades then returned to Salt Lake City just in time to witness the impending environmental disaster of the disappearing Great Salt Lake. She lives near Emigration Gap, a split in the mountains where pioneers entered the valley. She’s sure she would have been a lousy pioneer, questioning the authority of anyone who thought it was a smart idea to settle next to a salty lake. She has two poems about to be published by Dos Gatos Press in, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose and is about to release her second book, Unsolicited Greetings, a collection of post card poems.

Santo Guerro, by Al Farrow (USA) 2007. Photo by Rob Corder. (CC BY-NC 2.0)