5
Shotgun Wedding
by Ellen Webre
I had a pistol once, a museum replica
with stained glass scroll down the barrel
and an ivory tusk for the trigger,
it was a rifle made of blue willow porcelain,
abalone shell and lemon cream frosting.
My mother tried to bury it in the backyard
but this was the kind of AK 47 you bring
to a wedding, and I wasn’t going to let a
fashion statement like that go to waste.
I was going to be there when the bride
threw a grenade in her chrysanthemum bouquet.
And I knew that the bride and her father
would have to walk down a aisle
laced with land mines after all,
they deserved guests who could hold their own
during a robbery, a dueling range, a war zone.
“I don’t want weapons in the house” she said,
“and that wedding sounds unsavory. Don’t go.”
But I did. That’s where I met you.
The bride and groom crushed a molotv cocktail
under their feet, and champagne bottles
sprayed napalm out of their necks.
My gun fell to the floor when your scope
found your target, I did not even fight
when you lifted your bayonet to my chest.
Let me be prey let me bloom darkly.
I used to have a pistol,
but even that could not defend me
from the atomic bomb you had in your pocket.
Now in the aftermath of a mother’s “I told you so.”
I don’t have much of anything anymore.