Barrax, Gerald

King: April 4, 1968
for Eva Ray

1. When I was a child
2. in the Fall the axes fell
3. in Alabama and I tried
4. to be somewhere else,
5. but the squeals of the pigs dying
6. and hogs and the sight of their
7. opened throats were everywhere.
8.  
9. I wasn’t given that kind of stomach.
10.  
11. When I was 14, I killed
12. my last thing bigger than a mouse
13. with my Daisy Red Ryder,
14. a fat robin on a telephone wire,
15. still singing,
16. as my first shot went high
17. I sighted down and heard from where I was
18. the soft thud of the copper pellet in his
19. fat red breast. It just stopped
20. and fell over backwards
21. and I had run away
22. before it hit the ground, taking
23. my stomach with me.
24.  
25. I’ll never know about people–
26. if the soft thing in the stomach can be cut out–
27. because I missed all the wars–
28. but when I learned that non
29. violence kills you anyway
30. I wished
31. I wished I could do it I wished I
32. could
33. do you know what it means to wish
34. you could kill to
35. wish you were given that?
36.  
37. But I am
38. me. Whatever made me made
39. you, and I anesthetize the soft thing
40. to stop squirming when
41. you do it brothers I shout
42. righton righton rightON
43. my heart is with you
44. though my stomach is still in Alabama pig
45. pens.