Poem of the Month:

by Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Annie Oakley

Annie, get your gun.

Annie Oakley was a four syllabled lie,
she was really Phoebe Moses,
Phoebe Anne Moses
but Phoebe was too soft to load into her Winchester
and Anne too short,
so she lengthened Anne to Annie,
and tacked on Oakley
so both her names were two paces a piece —
An-nie
Oak-ley.
Besides, she was too small to have a single syllabled name —
she needed the -ie to weight her down,
keep her feet steady underneath her skirts.

She was the fifth of seven,
the smallest finger on a hand, a pinky,
or a thumb, depending on which way you started,
and she went from ruining pillow-soft quail breasts in a small corner of Ohio,
to splitting playing cards in an even two,
Queens separated from their upside-down selves.

Annie Oakley, get your gun.

Before she could even clean her gun,
Frank Butler, call me Frank, stuck a ring on her left hand,
promised to be true (she shrugged)
promised not to flinch when she shot a cigarette from his lips (she nodded).

And with a ring still confusing her left finger,
she traded her Ohio pop for Buffalo Bill,
traded the dusty walk to the general store,
birds slung over her shoulder, their bodies still warm against her shoulder blade,
wings quiet against her spine,
for a trip across the country, then another, another,
gun warm in her palm, tucked under her moving pillow,
and she crossed the country again, again
until cowboys became brothers,
fancy ladies with laced thighs her sisters
not-quite-as-sharp shooters envious cousins
and an untameable stallion the family dog.

She practiced daily on Frank’s lips,
then moved onto strangers’ lips,
tightly rolled white blown clean off,
and then the lips of the King of Prussia
who was also a stranger,
though he was a stranger who wore a crown
and barely spoke any English.

Annie Oakley, get your gun.

Annie refused the ruffled silks and plunging scarlets
of her gun-toting sisters
who weren’t nearly as sharp,
but reeked of scandal and turned audiences blind
with their hints of thigh and too-lipsticked pouts.
Annie couldn’t pout, and wouldn’t wear red,
but switched up her shooting hand
for an extra round of applause.
Usually, though, she shot right from Monday to Thursday noon
and then left until Sunday,
spending Wednesday evenings sewing —
skirts, pleated full at tiny waistbands
and long sleeved blouses that had more fabric in the sleeves and shoulders,
and were wider across the back than she was,
with enough cotton, muslin, linen-blend to let her raise her Winchester
and lower it, again, again,
they clapped,
again.

Annie Oakley, get your gun.
(But she would say git and yer
and gun would be shorter,
like a hard bit of spit on the end of her tongue).

ps: this poem was first published in echolocation
pps: Annie Oakley: Git Yer Gun was also a paper and soft-sculpture installation at the She Said Boom! Window Space: 372 College St. (at Augusta), Toronto

© 2007 Lindsay Zier-Vogel