Online Voices from Love & a Loaded Gun
Leda | Persephone | Demeter | Joan of Arc | Guinevere | Bonnie Parker | Rapunzel | Princess Peach | Clarice Starling
Love & a Loaded Gun
"What a thrill, what a deep satisfaction it is to read Emily Rose Cole’s fabulous Love and a Loaded Gun, in which iconic women from pop culture, myth, and history tell their own stories in their own ways. An older and wiser Dorothy sees kinship in a new storm, telling it, “We are the same kind of runaway.” Persephone returns with a fierce candor: “What did I expect?” she asks. “To leave a hemorrhage / of violets wherever I walked?” In these remarkable poems, the terrible rings with beauty, the beautiful is laced with violence, and all of it is spellbinding."
– Catherine Pierce
"Love and a Loaded Gun is proof of what happens when women – of literature, of history, of fame, of myth – are given the space to tell their stories in their messy, impossibly human detail. By inhabiting the perspective of renowned women – whether it’s Judy Garland – her mother stitching a bluebird into her throat – or Leda pursuing “a new hobby: take a shotgun / to the edge of a lake and shoot at every shadow of wings,” or Joan of Arc’s lover, Emily Rose Cole is asking: are you listening yet? And one thing is certain: you will. These poems take aim at your heart with harrowing precision and wild imagination. They are “the bullet / [you] won’t ever see coming.” – Ruth Awad
"The poems in Love & a Loaded Gun are about characters from history, pop culture, mythology, and the literary canon who are exploding for one reason or another—either because love is so impossible, because they are driven by rage to commit acts of revenge, or because they feel the burden of being a woman whose role it is to bear the world. They are also connected by apron strings, by bird feathers, by prayer, by love and its antidote, the loaded gun we point at our own weaknesses as well as our social preconceptions about feminism and womanhood. This collection, guised as myriad voices through time, serves as megaphone for the ages. This book has “arrived armed with love / & a loaded gun.” Our winning poet takes aim with the weapon of her words, “a bullet they won’t ever see coming,” and shoots a hole straight through the ceiling of glass." - Minerva Rising Press
Image Description: The cover of the chapbook Love & a Loaded Gun, featuring a dreamy image of a red-haired woman in a torn dress who is turned away from the viewer and looking at a field full of birds.