In the Gun Cabinet by Mike Lala
In the Gun Cabinet by Mike Lala
In the Gun Cabinet is sold out in its physical form, but here we have made a digital version available to you for free with the generous permission from the author, Mike Lala.
To download the digital version, simply add In the Gun Cabinet to your cart. You can bypass the credit card information by filling out every required field that ISN’T the credit card field (it autopopulates this for you) and clicking “Continue” to Step 2 and “Purchase” to Step 3. A link to the PDF will appear on the order confirmation page and, in addition, you’ll receive your digital copy via email. Enjoy!
In the Gun Cabinet is a multimedia poem by Mike Lala that blends oppositions with a mastery of language and trouble. The chapbook-length eponymous poem is theatrical in its starkness, pantomiming a danger that has ended and replays on loop. Here, memory is an indictment. Violence and whim walk the long path toward and away from place. Place is home or it is militant. One wears the uniform of birth or else the uniform of a soldier or else the uniform of a body, cock out and sentenced to wreckage.
Here, the gun cabinet rises as a monolith to annunciate a series of cruel family events, becalmed of violence as much as it is complicit with a violence. Embedded in this chapbook are screenshots of static, a dismantling of roles, an appetite for destruction, an interrogation of trauma, and a one-act play of self. Lala writes,
I was born, beauty ended
my appetite for destruction
cock out, tongue fluttering
under the pantry as it emptied
On-sale in February. Available for preorder now. Get 'em while it's hot and terrifying. (Spoiler alert: It will remain hot and terrifying until we are dust.)
Promo image by Tom Oristaglio.