Full Description
jump the gun digs deep into the dark undercurrents of grief and gun violence that shadow our daily lives in America. These poems uproot the hidden
recesses of life, the stages and struggles of womanhood, and our continual fight against violence, both internal and external, in the U.S. today.
The speaker in these
poems wrestles with the everyday fears and realities we often try to ignore:
the complex expectations
placed on young girls and mothers alike, the illusion of childhood innocence,
and the very real
consequences of our environmental destruction.
Split into two
sections—with poems that layer blood-soaked images between close-ups of the
body and domestic life—this collection deftly illustrates the beauty that can be
found in tragedy, the
fragility of the natural world, and the resilience of the human relationships
that fill it.
To read jump the gun
is to witness yourself through the crosshairs. In Malboeuf's words, "What hit you has become you. /
Pieces of the bullet embedded / in your skin. Even / that which you come from / will never be the
same. / But from violence comes / the tides, the seasons."
Contents
I.
Sex and Violence
Climate
Environment
Etymology of Gun
The Brass Bell
My Father Tells the Story of Seeing Tanya Tucker
Dancing on a Bar
How to Drive in Snow
The Mirror of God Is Only Glass
Litany
Marigolds
Piety
New Town
The Part of My Father Will Be Played by Jack Nicholson
Every Time You Type Moth, You Type Mother
The Book of Eyes
In Vivo Paradox
Girl on Girl
Aging
Luster
Lakes of the Other Carolina
Year of the Bonfires
The Human Animal
animals making music
The Questionmark Butterfly
Invasion
Prophesy
II.
Hiatus
thaw
The Mass Shooter of the Day Lived on My Childhood Street
(another) Reinvention of the Beginning of the Universe
Prosperity
Algorithm
Land and Sky
As Soon as We Are Born We Start to Die
Appellation Before Christening
5
Stork
making a man
blonde boy
epiphany
Trigger Warning
Pentecost
Pastoral of the Upland South
Culling
Jeremiad
The Two Near-Deaths of My Father
Like the Resurrection of Roseanne
Vanitas
The Position of the Sun in the Sky
Far Cry
Attrition
The Year We Met
No ideas but in objects
The Future
The Birth of the Moon
Acknowledgments
