Andrea Gibson's Poem "America, Reloading" Takes on the National Rifle Association

Several Denver-area artists have championed the gun-violence prevention movement that took off after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. Musician Nathaniel Rateliff[1] and his Marigold Project[2] have held workshops and donated to advocacy groups; the Americana singer even penned an op-ed about reforming gun laws. During the Crush Walls[3] street-art festival last September, artist Matador painted a provocative mural depicting an assault rifle by the words “school” and “7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Thought & Prayer Expected.” And Front Range band Avifauna[4] released a song taking on the National Rifle Association[5] on the twentieth anniversary of the April 20, 1999, massacre at Columbine High School. Now renowned Boulder-based spoken-word master Andrea Gibson has released a new video — produced by filmmaker Sarah Megyesy[6], with a soundtrack by Ani DiFranco[7] — for the poem “America, Reloading,” which can be found in Gibson’s latest collection, Lord of the Butterflies. The video shows children scrawling images about fear with crayons as Gibson’s voice delivers words that are as complex as they are devastating, damning our nation’s feeble response to mass shootings. The poem describes America as a country that celebrates “the independence of machine guns,” “where anybody can buy a cemetery at a sporting goods store.” The poet, who has long railed against wars, white supremacy, patriarchy and transphobia, says the project reflects a longstanding concern about gun violence, which Gibson obsessed over after moving to Colorado in 1999, shortly after Columbine. “I had friends who had spent that horrific day in the ER waiting room, waiting to see if their loved ones had or hadn’t survived,” Gibson recalls in an essay about the video. “As activist groups all over the state and nation rallied for gun reform, I remember feeling certain that the

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