Next Tuesday: Brian Turner: here is where the world ends every time

From Brian Turner's debut collection of poetry,

the title poem,

Here, Bullet:

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Brian Turner, born in Fresno, earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and served 7 years with the U.S. Army, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Iraq. He has published a collection of poetry that has earned him much notice and awards including the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, 2006 PEN Center USA Literary Award, a 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship and an NEA Literature fellowship in Poetry. He is Fullerton College's visiting poet for this year.

He reads on Tuesday October 16th at 7 pm in the Wilshire Auditorium at 325 E. Wilshire in Fullerton. Tickets are $5.00.

We should all be there.