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Getting the Range
Sure you want to put your bullet
where you look.
But the heart is a noisy organ:
just when you've got the sight hovering
on target, one little beat
will shout you off.
You learn not to breathe,
to start the trigger squeeze
far enough out it can't hurt you.
I mean, so slow, so whispery
your pulse takes the hint
and shuts up. Believe me,
when that black bead
at the end of the barrel
starts to settle,
it's not enough to quit thinking.
Your blood needs to go
real quiet.
You've got to be good as dead.
Reprinted with permission
Copyright © 1996 by George O'Connell
To order this book, send your name, mailing address, and a check for $8.00
+$2.00 s/h (includes tax) to The Nebraska Book Arts Center, University of
Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE 68182-0324. Or contact Denise Brady at
402.554.2773 or dbrady@unomaha.edu
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This month's Top of the Rock goes to poet George O'Connell's new book
Getting the Range, winner of the Soundpost Press Prize. Among
his other honors, in 1997 he won both first and second prizes in
The Bellingham Review's "49th Parallel Poetry Award,"
chosen by Albert Goldbarth.
A Chicago native, "Skip" holds the MA from the University of Illinois
and the MFA from the Iowa Writers'
Workshop. He has taught creative writing at UNO's Writers Workshop and in
Creighton University's creative writing program. Currently he teaches at
Hamilton College in upstate New York.
The poems of
George O'Connell are
characterized by intelligence, grace, and an unflinching ability
to gaze long and hard at that which makes us all too
terrifyingly human, as in the title poem from his prize-winning collection:
