Amy Baskin
Silence the Hearing
Dear Sir
You have shelved the Share Act
I hear that the hearing of hunters is at stake
and silencers will serve to eradicate
future aural impairments
Hear me out
silence the hearing
and all future hearings
that would serve to silence
The very tools that served to silence
the listeners at the Route 91 Harvest Festival
their hearing is impaired now
hear the silenced
Hear me out
when the Share Act
is trotted off the shelf
please vote no
Shooting massacres are as American
as apple pie as country music as the flag
within our sacred canon of red white and blue
rituals I no longer challenge this
Please allow us to hear
the bullets soar about us
this may give some of us a chance
to survive the next blood baths
thank you
your constituent
Editor’s Note: The Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act is a bill that would, among other things, make it easier to obtain gun silencers. After the mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, congressional sentiment turned against the bill, because silencers could make it more difficult for potential victims to flea a shooter who used a silencer. An article in the Washington Examiner on October 3, 2017 was titled “Republicans Shelve Gun Suppressor Bill After Las Vegas Shooting.” The October 1 mass shooting took place at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival held annually in Paradise, Nevada.
Amy Baskin’s poetry has appeared in Fire Poetry Journal, The Ghazal Page, Postcards, Poetry & Prose, Dirty Chai, and Panoply, and is forthcoming on Allison Joseph’s poetry blog. Baskin won the 2016 Paulann Petersen Award for Poetry from the Willamette Writers Kay Snow Writing Context.
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