I tried

everything I could think of to get a wanted poster of John Dillinger off a kid called Keys Gunther but he wouldn’t budge. The second he showed it to me I wanted it, I wanted it so bad that I broke out in a sweat just thinking about it. Nights I’d go to bed trying to figure ways to get it away from him. Maybe he’d go for a switchblade. Maybe if I upped the ante to two switchblades that might do it. Every time I went over to his house I’d make him get it out. I never got tired of looking at it. He used to say you can look at it but you can’t touch it and all I really wanted to do was touch it, again and again. I wanted to hold it in my hand and run my fingers across Dillinger’s face for luck. Then Keys would add, this belongs to my old man and if he knew I was showing it off like this he’d kick my ass. Continue reading todd moore | the machine gun blood of the poem→