Hemingway’s Shotgun

The Op and the girl Dinah Brand
eat a lot in Red Harvest
buckwheat pancakes and bacon
steak and potatoes
chow mein.
They drink a lot in Red Harvest
scotch
rye
bourbon
gin with bitters.
They die a lot in Red Harvest
a boxer stabbed in the ring
dagos shot to pieces in whiskey bath
poor Myrtle Jennison dying of
Bright’s disease who says:
“it’s hell to die ugly as this.”
Dinah, after all that eating
and drinking, with an
ice pick in her heart
and Dan the lunger.
Hammett was a lunger
death in his breath
each death breath
reminding him that
he knew the score:
put the feed on
and serve drinks
to your pages
and the corpses
will fall into
new hands and other hearts
and a Japanese movie
Yojimbo
with Mifune shoveling
rice
and gulping down
sake.

(John Rocco wrote a novel called FUR (published in Heaven’s Press, 2005). Poet Ron Whitehead called it “The Great American Novel.” No one read it. Or bought it. Check out FUR in the Books section of Ron Whitehead’s website.)