Hemingway’s Shotgun

His stone stands stoic, crowded and gray,
Shoved into a sleepy cemetery,
Squashed, as in life, between sister and wife.

The yew trees he planted prosper nearby.
They hold memory more truly, as do
The dew-drenched hamlets, the foggy farmwalls,
The hedges and long lakes, the bogs and ghylls,
The moss-green mountains and the cloudstill sky.

I marvel how his thick poetic thought
Has soaked the grass of the entire earth,
Strong drink for hearts in need of health and growth.
Am I a leaf on this rich highland field?
I will write, and walk, and plant trees, and hope.

(Eric D. Lehman is a professor of English at the University of Bridgeport, CT, and has published poetry, fiction, essays, and travel stories in dozens of journals, including The New Formalist, Moria, Mastodon Dentist, Canopic Jar, Switchback, Entelechy, Identity Theory, Hackwriters, and Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal.)

High school
newspaper
Half-assed attempts
at
spec screenplays
Research assistant
for
hot-shot movie star
(One of the good ones, actually
Until busted for possession of
coke
At Heathrow Airport
But that didn’t make him a
bad guy)
Hack screenwriter
for
low-budget movies
Movies destined to never be
produced
Living in L.A. too long will do that
to
a
writer

Screenplay
analyst
Scripts destined to
never be
produced
I saw to that
More half-assed attempts
at
spec screenplays
A few came close
to being
produced

Ducking down into
the
porno ghetto
By categories:
Screenplays
Advertising copy
Movie reviews
Porn star interviews
You should try interviewing
a porn star
There
is
nothing
there
Nothing
Three AVN awards for time served
in the
porno ghetto

Scores of
documentaries
written
There is no money to be made
in
documentaries

So

Freelance cultural critic
for
Magazines
(Buck a word,
not bad)
Underground newspapers
(Zero per word,
still not bad
More respectable than
porno)

The World Trade Center
buckles and falls
Dot com boom
goes bust
Freelance magazine gigs
All go south

So

Back to
Good God, no
The porno ghetto
Didn’t stay very long, though
The business had
changed
No one wanted
stories
not anymore
Just 19-year-old
girls
Who look like
twelve-year-old
girls
Cum dripping down
their faces

So

I didn’t linger very long at that
fair
Because
I
had
books
to
write

you need to

make your

protagonist

more likable

someone said

of my latest

attempt at

novel writing

immortality.

because if

you don’t,

no one will

want to finish

the book even

though it’s

brilliant in

parts, and

I said,

thanks for

reading

and told

him he was

a stupid

fuck albeit

under my

breath and

I thought about his advice.

I thought about

bookstores and libraries,

rows and rows of

boring books

I’ve made

myself read

over the years

so I could

see how it was

done, and most

of those books

are written by

professors of English

or creative writing,

I thought about

all of their likable

protagonists, upper

mostly, full of

conflict and suburban

angst, so unlike

my most recent

protagonist,

vain, selfish, lazy

and conflicted 

and that’s the

character I’m

rolling with

maybe because I’m

vain, selfish, lazy

and conflicted

with absolutely

no hope for

resolution.

(David LaBounty lives in suburban Detroit with his wife and two sons. His poetry has been published in several online and print journals. His most recent novel is The Trinity)

Emotional eunuchs guard
the portals of poetry
and arbitrarily judge
who is allowed to enter.
Armed with the weapons of style,
they have forgotten substance.
In the safety of college
they are immune to the struggle
that consumes mankind daily,
and prefer a metaphor
to an unadorned statement.
They never seem to wonder
why people no longer feel
a thrill reading poetry.

(Gary Beck’s poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines. His recent fiction has been published in numerous lit mags as well. His chapbook, The Conquest of Somalia, by Cervena Barva Press. His plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocoles have been produced off-Broadway. He lives in New York)

Gin limber, she lies on her tummy
contorting sentences under the lava
lamp. No room in the final note
for a litany. No space
for a nervous breakdown.
Corner-painted. Mother bashed.
Apron-strung. Quirks cosseted,
she conspires like a murderess
to pull a Plath, to stick her head
into the oven, not another bun.

Not another word. Let the loud
print dress do all the talking.

(Heather is a Canadian poetess, writer, and performance artist. Previously at Hemingway’s Shotgun, Heather has contributed Three Blocks West of Wonderland.)

Owen’s parents sat by the fire smoking joints and lighting ladyfingers.
Heath’s mother passed out with the TV on.
Mike’s grandparents drank lite beer and played euchre.
                                     *
The cliché is …experimentation should be reserved for the college years,
but it was old news by the time I was eight.
My sexual revolution peaked in the first grade.
                                     *
Owen gave me my first blowjob.
Heath pinched my nipples and called me Kylie.
Mike told me to buttfuck him.
                                     *
I wrote a poem about a neighbor boy who asked me to piss in his mouth –
it quickly became my most popular piece, inciting loud and drunken requests
at Open Mics. The infinitesimal celebrity felt good.
In my first workshop I was told I use humor to mask my shame.

(Josh Olsen is a father of two and a writing instructor at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University)

I never planned on writing poetry.
Never thought of poetry as
anything other than weird crap
strung together with a plan
or slapped together
with no plan at all
written by strange men
and garden club women.
Merry rhyme at best and
bull crap form at worst.
Strange stuff you were
forced to read in school.
Then somewhere, somehow
I found ‘underground’.
Poetry that said more than
sweet nothings or just
sang of pretty butterflies.
Poetry that spoke of life.
Poetry that spoke of
real things good and bad.
Poetry that spoke of
the human condition with
all the failings of the world
both assailed and embraced 
portraying desperation and hope
on the same level as kismet.
And thoughts come at random
unannounced from well hidden
depths of emotion and logic
and I write them down as
unplanned poetry by a
now poet.

(Daniel S. Irwin is an Illinois-based “artist/writer (both a matter of opinion) and works with the criminally insane.” His work can be found at My Coffee, Zygote, Spin, and Yellow Mama)

O Jesus Jack you make me want to cry
I hear your words and know that you are dead
I hear your living words and know you’re dead
by your own hand
I just don’t know for why
you say your “form of blues…is limited…”
and no one cares and no one ever did

O Jesus why, it makes me wanna cry
and what’s this called the blues
you took with you
to everywhere you went
from here to hell and gone
and what’s to do now
what’s this called the blues
that’s made of you
while time is meaning nothing ‘til you die
and roxy poets coax you with their muse
not one of you drank deep enough
to know you were alive, not one of you
and what’s this spirit brother called the blues
and what’s to do

O Jesus Jack they sat and watched you die
a thousand times
not one of them your equal by a mile
as wide as tears
not one of them your mistress
or your master by the sea
not one of them you always ran to see
could ever see
you running after life
with death in hand
and death inside
or what to do
about this thing you called the blues
that’s all of you
and all you ever do

O Jesus Jack
it’s all you ever knew
you make your desperate choices
then the choices they make you

(Mikael Covey lives in Dakota with his five-year-old daughter. You can find him at Stokeycat and Lit Up Magazine.)

(With Apologies To Dorothy Parker)

Xanax floors you;
Old bars are dank;
Playstation bores you;
And you’ve got no bank.
Poker’s not lawful;
Ennui throbs;
The soaps are awful;
You might as well get a job.

(The Fake Angeleno is helping to organize an L.A. chapter of the International Dorothy Parker Society. He invites everyone to join him for a martini or two or three at the chapter’s inaugural meeting April 24th at the El Cid in Silverlake)

Hemingway’s shotgun
is still out there
 
like a sniper’s rifle
like a forward-positioned gun
 
you weren’t expecting
casualties on your computer
 
emotionally stumbling
through the solitude
of cyberspace
 
needing another drink
to neutralize the threat
of a dry throat
 
realizing a future writing
reputation has been delivered
on a bipod of raw talent
 
on a temporary billet
of writer’s block
 
as the petrochemical
fumes further complicate
 
the walk over
open carpet
 
out of position
at the cocktail cabinet
 
with enough velocity
to lift the elevation turrets
of autopilot
 
learning center black
is leading you on
 
your first
internal ambush

(Recent poems of David S. Pointer have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Labour of Love, and The Beatlick News.)