Reflections in a D’Back’s Eye

Reflections in a D’Back’s Eye explores gun violence explores gun violence in America in an unexpected way – against its fall from nature – by way of the mass shooting in which Representative Gabrielle Giffords was wounded and a nine-year-old girl was killed.
“Reflections in a D’Back’s Eye” by Deanne Stillman is a mashup of ad slogans, ancient myth, police reports, the Grand Canyon, and imagined dialogue, exploring gun violence in America against its fall from the sacred via the mass shooting in which Representative Gabrielle Giffords was wounded and a nine-year-old girl who loved baseball was killed. How did a young man who once played Coltrane on the sax decide to place a little girl in his rifle sights? What is the way out of our predicament? The “d’back” in the title refers to the diamondback rattlesnake, a creature of transformation.