Slipstream Press: The Gun Looks Wrong

“The Gun Looks Wrong” – a poem about a game of Duck Hunt gone, well, Slipstream, is featured in the 45th Annual issue (“Strange Days” theme) of Slipstream magazine.

Founded in 1980, Slipstream features the work of both new and established writers. Charles Bukowski, Gerald Locklin, Wanda Coleman, Lyn Lifshin, David Chorlton, Jim Daniels, Ron Koertge, Sean Dougherty and Sherman Alexie are among the many writers whose work has appeared in the pages of Slipstream.

The issue is print-only and available for purchase here.

The Gun Looks Wrong 

The gun looks wrong, 

you know what I mean?

Two-tone gray – cubicle gray, 

rubber shoe sole gray – and 

a cadmium trigger. Dead 

red-orange. Simple as a stapler.

Nintendo calls it The Zapper. 

No one calls it that. It’s just the gun.

A duck soars and you shoot it, 

dead in the sky. A dog 

grabs its neck, holds it limp,

an eight bit grotesquerie for

Little Jack Horner

shooting birds in the corner. 

I gather them. I stroke 

greasy plumes, thumb torn out holes, I struggle

to hold them. The effort of it all.

The thuds. The corpses, heavier than I’d thought.

All around a floor of black feathers. 

A floor of orange beaks and my limp plastic gun.