People have been dying since people were people.

I’m buying a lottery ticket so I can afford to take every assault rifle
off the market, drop them into the middle of the Atlantic.

Imagine an octopus at a shooting range: goddamn goddamn
goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn.

Goddamn.

Everyone who dies while someone is writing a poem goes straight to heaven.

That’s in the Bible.

It’s in what Joseph dug up in the woods.

It’s on page twelve of the NRA handbook.

It’s painted on the walls in the cells of the prison on the bay.

No man is an island but some men are bays.

I think Jon Bon Jovi said that.

C.J. Miles is the author of the forthcoming collection, What Is Anything Without Pandas. His poetry has appeared in The Penn Review, McNeese Review, UCIty Review, and Moonglasses Magazine, among others.

Find him on Twitter @cjmilespoet, or at his website, https://cjmilespoet.wordpress.com/