Gun
BY TODD ANDERSON
At the top of this poem
there is a gun hanging on a peg
like you would expect a hat to,
and you’re starting to feel a little
uneasy because this is no Winchester Rifle
that hangs over the fireplace
to honor Pop-Pop’s old days
in the African bush.
No, this is a simple black handgun,
you can’t tell much more than that,
because you’ve always pretended to know
a little bit more about firearms than you actually
do, when in fact, you’re a little afraid to find out
what makes some guns better than others.
So you decide to look away from the gun,
resting so casually on its peg,
at the top of this poem,
and look out the window because
yes, you’ve been sitting at the window
all along. You look out on not much of a view.
Two small boys are playing
with sidewalk chalk in a narrow alley
between two red-brick buildings.
They are coloring something in.
They’ve done the outline already.
One boy is filling the legs in purple
and the other is filling the chest in red,
and it’s a person.
It’s a person.
You look around for police tape,
or for a fallen body that wouldn’t
color outside the lines.
But there’s nothing, and it’s finished;
a purple silhouette with a bloody beating heart.
And now, one of the boys lies down next to it,
and his friend, because they must be friends,
chalks a purple outline around him,
and it all starts again.
You just can’t tell
if these kids have grown up around
too many suicides or
if this is the closest thing they have to
snow angels, and you can’t quite tell
if they’re smiling
and you’re not quite sure which you’d prefer.
So now you look back,
back to the gun
hanging on its peg
at the top of this poem.
You are looking for answers,
but it doesn’t take questions.
It just hangs there.
Like a hat.
And you’ve heard what Chekhov
had to say about guns that get hung on the
wall in Act 1, but you don’t know
who will pull the trigger.
So you sit there,
waiting alone,
and hoping it isn’t you.
At the top of this poem
there is a gun hanging on a peg
like you would expect a hat to,
and you’re starting to feel a little
uneasy because this is no Winchester Rifle
that hangs over the fireplace
to honor Pop-Pop’s old days
in the African bush.
No, this is a simple black handgun,
you can’t tell much more than that,
because you’ve always pretended to know
a little bit more about firearms than you actually
do, when in fact, you’re a little afraid to find out
what makes some guns better than others.
So you decide to look away from the gun,
resting so casually on its peg,
at the top of this poem,
and look out the window because
yes, you’ve been sitting at the window
all along. You look out on not much of a view.
Two small boys are playing
with sidewalk chalk in a narrow alley
between two red-brick buildings.
They are coloring something in.
They’ve done the outline already.
One boy is filling the legs in purple
and the other is filling the chest in red,
and it’s a person.
It’s a person.
You look around for police tape,
or for a fallen body that wouldn’t
color outside the lines.
But there’s nothing, and it’s finished;
a purple silhouette with a bloody beating heart.
And now, one of the boys lies down next to it,
and his friend, because they must be friends,
chalks a purple outline around him,
and it all starts again.
You just can’t tell
if these kids have grown up around
too many suicides or
if this is the closest thing they have to
snow angels, and you can’t quite tell
if they’re smiling
and you’re not quite sure which you’d prefer.
So now you look back,
back to the gun
hanging on its peg
at the top of this poem.
You are looking for answers,
but it doesn’t take questions.
It just hangs there.
Like a hat.
And you’ve heard what Chekhov
had to say about guns that get hung on the
wall in Act 1, but you don’t know
who will pull the trigger.
So you sit there,
waiting alone,
and hoping it isn’t you.
TODD ANDERSON is a senior, poetry major at Carleton College in Northfield, MN where he founded the school’s Literary Open Mic and is an editor for the Carleton Literary Association Press and The Manuscript creative writing journal. He has performed at Slam venues in New York, Chicago and the Twin Cities including Bar 13, the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Green Mill, and the St. Paul Soap Boxing Slam. On Friday afternoons he likes to set up his typewriter next to a flower shop and writes poems for people to give to their loved ones.