All Fun & Guns Until

Have you heard the one about guns?

A priest, a rabbi, and a gun walk into a bar.

Knock knock. Who’s there? Guns.

Why is six afraid of seven? Because guns.

Fuck, marry, kill: Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump, Guns.

How many guns does it take to change a lightbulb?

Why did the gun cross the road?

Who’s on guns?

I just flew in with my gun, and boy, are my arms tired!

Did you hear the one about the gun at the school?

When I was growing up, we had to walk three miles both ways uphill in the snow to get to
school, and we couldn’t use getting shot as an excuse!

Nobody:
Absolutely no one:
Not a single soul on this Earth:
Not even their mom:
Guns: Everyone keeps asking me about my mass shooting routine, so here it is.

Guns say the darndest things.

Any guns here from out of town?

Guns woke up today and chose violence.

The last thing a gun wants to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

White guns go like this, but black guns go like this.

Your gun so fat.

I’ve heard better jokes from a gun.

You think standup’s so easy, you get up here and shoot someone.

What’s the difference between a pickpocket and a gun?

This gun goes to 11.

My doctor tells me I have cancer, I say I want a second opinion, and he says, oh yeah, then pulls out a gun.

Dating’s weird, right? I went out with my first gun since my divorce…that joke killed in Orlando!

Why are guns such bad drivers?

Blonde 1: Don’t tell anyone, but guns scare me. Blonde 2: Me three.

When I’m good, I’m very good… but when I have a gun, I’m better.

That’s what gun said.

A gun stole my baby!

Looks like there’s a gun missing its idiot.

What do you get when you cross a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun?

Who’s got two thumbs and a gun? This guy!

Take my gun…please!

Said no gun ever.

Keep your friends close and your guns closer.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is a gun.

Guns are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

You might be a gun if… you go anywhere and shoot someone.

Seven words you can never say on television: shit, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and gun control.

Guns get no respect.

Bitch better have my gun.

Your gun or your life.

It’s so crazy that so many people are wrong about guns, and none of them are me.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen; guns will be here all week.

Don’t forget to shoot your bartender.

But seriously, what’s the deal with guns?

Hiss

the robot in me wants out
the koala wants in
eucalyptus dreaming
hibiscus heart, slow
sloth-like, claws reaching up
carrying away the quiet
nondenominational and righteous

the quiet in me
the loudest tinnitus
here it is, a hum
presented as an echo
in a myocardial dish
it is rose quartz; cold
it warms to the touch
it wants to be touched
is it online
is it enjoying a sale
etsyable, dollaring, does it
cart to cart

the calm in me spreads
this tin cup bedazzle
that only the crows will touch
the lemonest lighthouse
is it precious? it is
common as ore
how do I explain luminous
how do I break down
diamonds, gold
to the Barbie in me
tell her how
plastic is made,
how rubber
how to walk her through
high heels
to pointy-toed whereabouts.
and what a man is made of

and how
these stacks of bills in me, ungroomed
already been taken care of
already atlased, all
of the above
the world is a mistake

the weight in me
wallets the shouldering
the liar I am knows I am no Atlas,
I am no ox, I am
every incident, I am
the long distance
binoculars of what
do we have here,
and here, and here

Aren’t you, too, every beast
of burden, every Pandora thing
turned loose
and left
for dread

The Heart

If the heart is a place, it’s at the top of the TV tower that I passed this morning with the buzzard standing, its wings spread, posed, paused, absorbing the sun of what’s just another day. Buzzards get a bad rap, but imagine what would happen if they didn’t. I also saw a golden eagle, but it wasn’t doing anything worth watching. If the heart is a place, it’s wherever Santa is on Christmas Eve. There he is, roaring over Morocco, like me when I kissed another stranger in that bar in Adams Morgan. He said he was from Morocco, and we danced all night, a sentence that doesn’t mean much unless you’ve done the dancing. But he, the Moroccan, handled me like a mirror ball in that strobed and smoky hazard. He was beautiful and unknown and completely safe because I was there, after all, with my best friends: Binh, Riley, and Jason. If the heart is a place, it’s in a club with boys looking out for you, not just at you. What I mean by that is that even when I was groping and grinding and kissing and kissing again whoever he was against the bricks and pillars, believing in life after love and genies in bottles, I knew I’d disappear without a backward glance or sharing my name, pretending not to hear when he asked for my number. I wasn’t leaving with anybody but my boys, even if the Sapporo and shots made me messy with this beautiful stranger. It wasn’t until the lights came up and he found me again that I noticed my dancer was missing at least a top front tooth. And a side tooth. And a bottom tooth. That’s where my tongue had been? He asked me again for my number, his accent thick as the distance between the dance floor and the exit door. If the heart is a place, it’s between two and three a.m. in a 1992 Honda Prelude five-speed, cherry red, Riley in the front passenger seat, Jason driving, and Binh and me in the back smoking Marlboro Ultra Lights, passing Christmas lights on our way back to Bethesda. I’m telling them all about the Moroccan, they’re telling me all about the Moroccan: how did I not notice his black mouth? We’re still the most fun we’ve ever been, trying to decide whose place we’re all crashing at and where we can pick up maybe some Domino’s or Doritos, and definitely more beer, more smokes, more tonight, more tomorrow.

Crystal Oliver is a poet and songwriter living in Southern Maryland.  Her music is available to stream (look for Crystal Brandt). Her writing has appeared in Bluestem, The Brooklyn Review, The Delmarva Review, Woman, and Southern Maryland: This Is Living. She also directs the Chesapeake Writers’ Conference and is the Editor-in-Chief of EcoTheo Review. Website: http://www.crystal-oliver.com