DES MOINES, IOWA, USA

 

DES MOINES, IOWA, USA

 

DES MOINES, IOWA, USA

 

DES MOINES, IOWA, USA

 

Interstate 80, IOWA, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

    Personal Savior

Some of you have Jesus, 

   ah,  but me? 

I had my Aunt Carol. 

Indeed, when I 

here come to think of 

one’s own personal savior, 

instead of Him with Halo, 

it was She of Shaolin. 

 

Oh sure, 

Jesus could walk on water, 

and yea, that’s some 

pretty serious kung fu, 

but as butch as that was, 

you have to bear in mind how 

Jesus insisted you had to 

   turn the other cheek, 

yet on the scale of kung to fu, 

my Aunt Carol was far more likely 

to turn your cheek 

than to there turn hers 

in subject genuflection. 

 

And here we rewind to unkind. 

Walt Disney opposed to 

that dread Tarantino. 

Either a half-hour ago 

or a good half-century, 

I am there to be found frolicking 

in a public swimming pool. 

Cavorting as it were. 

And there, in your mind, 

you herewith picture me cavorting… 

well, half this body cavorting; 

the other, a flipper 

flapdoodle frolicking. 

 

Oh, not this body mind you. 

No, that I all of seven 

or so years young. 

And within these moments 

of devil may care, 

there’s a very good chance that 

you share this public pool with 

some foul form of Satan’s Spawn. 

Indeed, in this case, 

said “Satan’s Spawn” 

was another boy of 

around ten years old. 

There was he gone evil incarnate, 

and that of wee me, aka this 

profoundly cherubic angel of renown— 

I, alas elemental matter to 

his maniacal mental anti-matter. 

Woe but mine refined alkaline 

had there come to bump his dump-

   truck o’ bad acidity.

 

Alas twee me a splish-splash 

   spunk spasmodic, 

mine piscine seen unclean aquatic, 

I here found fish-flounder quixotic, 

versus this fried-fishy-fist psychotic. 

Me minor minnow, whilst 

he pool fish-school despotic. 

We two askew, alack and at loss 

of some sympath-symbiotic. 

 

And so he kicks me in the stomach. 

And yea,     it hurts. 

Once again, he moves toward me 

and lifting his hips, 

viciously sends the ball of his foot 

into my already cratered chest. 

In pain, I here attempt 

to kick him in return,    

but what tadpole ever prevails 

against a full-formed frog? 

 

This pool-bully-frog commences 

his third and final coup de grace 

and it’s just here that I notice 

there’s a throng of other thugs 

fanned about and around him. 

Yes, this is a thing and I 

the designate fret “thingette”. 

 

With the sudden realization 

that I’m the prey for the day, 

I frantically turn and paddle 

for this pond’s distant shore. 

And there I sit upon concrete 

for the next forty minutes 

or until my Aunt Carol is 

scheduled to pick me up. 

 

She finds me just inside 

the pool’s darkened entrance 

and there asks why I didn’t 

meet her out at the car. 

“Them,” I reply, 

pointing to the throng of boys 

amassed there out on the sidewalk. 

“That big kid’s gonna beat me up.”

 

Aunt Carol looks to the boys, 

then back to me, 

then slowly back to them. 

Ah, the look on her face! 

Ludicrous comes to mind. 

Ludicrous soon giving way 

   to absolute disgust. 

That some runt-rank infantilissimo 

would want to hurt her nephew? 

Inconceivable!

 

And within seconds, 

she’s standing there before that 

pre-pubescent post-pustulant punk. 

He and his army of petulant pond-scum 

versus she, a card carrying member 

of the Woman’s Proactive 

Testicular Castration Movement 

(or something to that effect). 

 

And though I cannot hear 

just what’s being said, 

I can see that her verbal jiujitsu  

does not sit well with this thine 

frog-dumb’s current plan for 

amphibian dame-domination. 

So much so that he 

decries his discontent  

by way of heinous hand gesture. 

 

And what is he? 

     What is he? 

Lo, what is he but the 

embodiment of every man 

that Aunt Carol will ever have known 

and there further endure for 

the remainder of her life? 

 

Thus there in those fabled 60s, 

my Aunt Carol’s open hand 

   whipped from her hip 

to strike a mighty blow across 

this boorish boy’s boisterous face. 

And dang if this cesspool bully 

   didn’t begin to bawl. 

 

Spare the rod… and 

damned be thy ruptured cod 

nay say a scrotum spunk fizzle. 

 

One small frog gone agog 

and the manhood of mankind 

here future scythe circumcised. 

Lo be that blessed day that 

mine Aunt Carol became divine 

Shaolin Saint and Savior. 

 

Ó2023 Jack David Hubbell

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

   Double-Aught Wrought 

Any shotgun’s got a certain heft to it, 

and by ‘heft’ I do not necessarily 

   mean weight. 

No caliber or gauge 

of heft held in hand 

compared to that 

of each lead-laden shell 

as you there feed the gaping maw 

of its hollowed magazine. 

 

And here the day has come 

wherein my father’s decided to 

bequeath his prized shotgun to me. 

 

That pregnant moment where 

he begins to ease his grip 

and there transfer said 

   heft unto me.

That precious moment where 

I was meant to return his gaze 

and there see myself 

   reflected within. 

And yet, this day he’s chosen 

to give me his shotgun 

holds a certain decorum of gravitas 

far more significant to him    

   than I. 

 

Indeed, there as he passes 

that gun into my waiting hands, 

his grip is retained for 

a full second or more. 

Yes, this moment of lingered legacy  

is to have been duly noted by me 

far more than its actual passage. 

 

Herein, such recollections emit forth 

as scattershot blasts of woe leaden pellets 

long come to miss their fleeting target. 

That felt recoil at his shoulder 

as he presses gunstock to cheek… 

that versus the lifelong recoil 

of our fraught relationship.

 

Father and son of a gun. 

He as son to his father’s gun. 

His father loaded with alcohol; 

his shotgun loaded with double-aught. 

He gunshot and liquor besot  

there to release lethal blast 

unto she both wife and mother. 

 

My father there as mere boy, 

sitting upon his own father’s lap, 

with his face a bawl full of tears,  

whilst that of his weaker grip 

wraps round the barrel of a gun. 

 

One man and one boy, 

each to one side a virulent coin— 

that which now drunken 

flips a clatter down to the floor. 

And there it spins… 

   it spins… and it spins.  

Seemingly so, one 

twelve-gauge enraged 

liquor-laden lifetime 

unto another.

 

Up to this moment 

where my father now places 

his shotgun into my hands, 

full knowing that there 

will come a moment 

when he’ll be forced 

   to let it go. 

 

Ó 2023 Jack David Hubbell 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

OMAHA, NE, USA

 

Off Interstate 80, NE, USA