Mike Rollin
The poem, “Me and the boy with the gun,” comes from
my experience of being mugged at gunpoint a block from my house
in September 2005. I feel fortunate to have come away unharmed
physically. The emotional harm done, the frayed nerves, will
take time to heal. Some nights now, the distance from my car
to my front door seems impossibly long. And while it has been
helpful to share this experience with others, it has been equally
as distressing to find out that so many people have had similar
experiences involving guns and robbery. In the poem, I wanted
to dig into the intersection of deeply felt personal trauma
and the larger social forces that contribute to the prevalence
of this kind of what I would describe as crime of desperation.
My assailant took a tremendous risk with both of our lives,
all in the end for $7. I don’t know that kind of isolation,
nor what I would do in his shoes—I do know that it isn’t
uncommon in this time and place. Minneapolis. Minnesota. U.
S. A. So while part of the “recovery” involved writing
this piece involved naming the event and shaping the images
and terms of the story as I see it in order to gain some shaky
control over my assault, I am equally, if not more, interested
in the discovery process involves—what did I learn about
myself, the world, and poetry, by writing this piece? For me,
a central theme in this poem is the idea of intimacy and shared
danger, looked at both in terms of the personal and the public,
and the intersection of those spheres. What, if any, is the
social contract that guides my conception of life in community?
Who is the “we” I live within? And will my assault
leave me feeling more isolated, or somehow more connected? My
hope is that this poem, and the other works in the exhibit,
will encourage new possibilities for relationships and help
to mend some of what is damaged by crime and violence.
|
