While we brandish the gun it will not be vulnerable
to science, the only evidence will be patriot-based.
While gunshots are heritage, entitlement is violent,
based on the illness not the gun, so onward we
cower, crowds in a rain no longer water but steel.
We die a diversity of deaths. Bump stocks, semi-
automatics, high-capacity magazines, whose rapid fire
sportsmanship is science, a frontier-based entitlement.
Yet the only deaths we scrutinize are fetus-based. X
out sex from the stats, “other” couplings are evidence
of how vulnerable a body might be, and we wish to
de-fund the diversity riding a fetus. We die a science
of deaths, yet let reports show we die transgender-less.
Our study refuses to learn that less gender is less love.
Lisa Furmanski is a physician and writer living in New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Antioch Review, and others.
Inspiration: My husband and I worked with the CDC in Uganda for several years. The scientists are brilliant, conscientious, and saving lives every day (think influenza, Ebola, obesity, swimming pools). To hamper them in any way, particularly in regards to language, endangers us all.
The CDC Poetry Project 