Love & the Loaded Gun

by Emily Rose Cole

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The poems in Love & the Loaded Gun are about characters from history, pop culture, mythology, and the literary canon who are exploding for one reason or another—either because love is so impossible, because they are driven by rage to commit acts of revenge, or because they feel the burden of being a woman whose role it is to bear the world. They are also connected by apron strings, by bird feathers, by prayer, by love and its antidote, the loaded gun we point at our own weaknesses as well as our social preconceptions about feminism and womanhood. This collection, guised as myriad voices through time, serves as megaphone for the ages. This book has “arrived armed with love / & a loaded gun.” Our winning poet takes aim with the weapon of her words, “a bullet they won’t ever see coming,” and shoots a hole straight through the ceiling of glass.

Freddie Flint-Smythe, a Silicon Valley wife and stay-at-home mother, writes memoirs so The Outsourcers can offer a new service that converts the client’s personal past and desired future into a better predicted present. This virtual assistant, called “Freddie,” is based on the real-life Freddie and extracts information to create real-time options in daily life. “Freddie,” the virtual assistant, literally shifts cause and effect.

Will Freddie trust her true self and find her way back to authenticity, or will she lose her humanity and everyone she loves in favor of her virtual self?