bb guns. by John Gochalski

for a while

all the boys wanted a bb gun

and as usual the rich kids

got them right away

while the rest of us ate cake

i don’t know what sparked the need

maybe all of those violent 1980s films

maybe slaughter was just

an american right of passage

all i know is that

it was open season on squirrels and birds

any rabid racoon

trying to negotiate his way around the sun

jamie kelso had a shotgun bb gun

that you could pump up to ten times

he shot at toads in the woods

and salamanders under rocks

when it rained

we went into his basement

and lined up action figures

and non-valuable baseball cards

and blew them away

one time

jamie handed me the gun

i pumped the thing up to ten

while he arranged baseball cards

without thinking i pulled the trigger

and the bb got jamie right in his ass

he ran around his basement

screaming and yelling and crying

looking like

a squirrel

a bird

a raccoon

a toad

a salamander under a rock

hopping over to me

with his pants down

and his bare ass showing

wanting me to make sure

that i hadn’t blown

a second hole in his ass

and honestly

none of it

felt like a violent 1980s film

i was just glad

that i had bad aim

and that jamie’s rich parents

were not

at home that day.

John Gochalski is a writer whose poetry has appeared in several online and print publications including:  Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Outsider Writers Collective, Underground Voices, The Lilliput Review, The Main Street Rag, Zygote In My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, and Bartleby Snopes.  He is also the author four books of poetry The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch (Six Gallery Press, 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Press, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018).  I am also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press, 2013) and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press, 2016)