Every Man on Tinder Has a Gun

1 Minute Read Time

This photograph shows a phone on the wooden surface, with the Tinder app being open on the device.

and each one wants
               to describe it to me. its slippery metal.

the intricate and pistol-hot
               pieces. the small and heavy bullets

that slip into the barrel
               —snug. warm. trembling. touch it,

one of the men might
               say, holding it in his cold broad

hands. he might offer
               it to me, like a rose. like a fat

diamond ring. the gun
               nestled in a blue velvet

box. maybe I do touch
               it—stroke my thumb over

its darkness—its slick
               and thick body. maybe this

is what I was looking for:
               heat, his body dense and holstered.

but my tenderness is bloodier than 
               a gun: it is the burning

of a slow match—call it
               lighting a fire. spilling gasoline

on the spark. cocking the gun
               and blowing smoke from its mouth.

Sara Ryan

Sara Ryan is a poet and student living in Lubbock, Texas. She is a second year at Texas Tech University, where she is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing. She received her MFA at Northern Michigan University. She received her BA in Creative Writing at University of Miami. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as Best of the Net. She was a Best of the Net finalist in 2016. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from various nationally recognized publications.

Her first chapbook, Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned, was published by Porkbelly Press in 2018. Her second chapbook, Excellent Evidence of Human Activity, was published by The Cupboard Pamphlet in 2019. She was the winner of Grist Journal’s 2018 Pro Forma Contest and Cutbank’s Big Sky, Small Prose Contest. Her academic interests include material culture and criticism, poetic forms, hybrid writing, image/text literature and the lyric essay.

Her first full-length collection, I Thought There Would Be More Wolves, won the 2020 Permafrost Poetry Book Award and was published by University of Alaska Press in 2021.

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