Reagan M. Sova

THE SAME REVOLVER


my bags are packed
memories are flowing like the blood of
my hands when my classmates 
held me down and pierced my palms with
a buck knife 
they did it after my second-grade teacher
had said i was a dead ringer for young jesus christ
she was the champion of crazy talk
she said she didn’t wear a helmet on her motorcycle because
she knew she would go to heaven when she died
she said she played russian roulette
with her stepfather’s revolver while
her black dog zerubbabel whimpered in the corner
she said she was laughing and praying for heaven the whole time 

it was the same revolver that would get pressed to my temple
a decade on

my second-grade teacher’s stepfather
an affluent hog rancher
had plied my grandfather 
with peruvian marching powder to
get him mixed up with a fork-tongued banker
he swindled my grandfather 
out of all his raw gold dust in the cellar
that was my inheritance 
i learned the news 
when my grandfather died roller skating 
i drove the banker’s cadillac into the lake
i set all the hogs free under the moonlight
two hog hands caught me and brought me to the rancher
he put the cold steel to my head and said
who is your father
i said my father is a collapsed bridge
my father is a mule stung to death by the king’s bees
my father is hobo honey wine
my father is a soldier of thirteen on
a swaying ship of rats
i am the demon son you cannot kill
my ghost will ride above ground
unmoved by incantations 
i will return on a ship of hogs before
the next blood moon
and they will gnaw your faces to the bone

the rancher turned his gun around
on himself laughing himself 
to tears saying 
don’t think for a second boy
this is your gypsy spell
i know what i’m about to do
the lord is calling me home 


Reagan M. Sova is an American writer living in Belgium. His debut novel, Tiger Island (2017), intermingles the wide worlds of soccer, universal basic income, anarcho-syndicalism, and WikiLeaks. An underground bestseller, the book received praise from a member of the rock group Pavement and was featured on Artists for Assange. Check out Reagan's monthly newsletter here.