Tonight's Poet Corner: Family History

Family History
by Belinda Roddie

My mother shot her brother after
he threatened to burn down their father's
house so he could open up a pizza parlor.
She told me that the sound of a bullet hitting
a jawbone is similar to the popping
of a kernel of corn, but I didn't think
it was so simple.

I got my first gun when I was thirteen.
The first thing I killed was a squirrel
that attacked my sister. She got shots
because the little furry bastard might
have been rabid. Its tail still hangs
from a chain I wear when I go to
Papa Max's Tavern on Saturdays.
Like it's a dog tag, or a fucking medal
of honor.

Have you ever pulled a tooth out of a man's
mouth with alligator forceps? It's actually
rather soothing, so long as he doesn't
scream too loudly. When I was younger,
I'd have dreams of my teeth getting too loose,
like pegs in a rotten plank, and I would
pluck them out and wiggle my tongue
around the empty spaces until I woke
up and made sure that all my molars
were still there. Doing it to someone else,
though - it's therapeutic. It's better than
a massage.

On my thirty-third birthday, I shot a guy
in the face after he threatened to rat me
and my siblings out to the feds. I'm
pretty sure the bullet went right through his
mandible, his gurgling blocking out
the baseball announcer on the tavern's big
screen TV. My mother was wrong. It doesn't
sound like crackling corn. It sounds like
the time I dropped a rock into the creek
near my grandfather's house, but it hit one
of its brothers on the way down, and the thud
rattled me so badly that I couldn't sleep
for the entire night.