It Feels Good to Feel A Happening

by Jeff M

While the country high-balls it to recession and my freelance work has dried and died like a turd on a Fort Lauderdale sidewalk, I am shooting a gun. I'm pivoting due east against a rising morning sun. I am in Missouri, standing firm on the earth's axis, holding this God-loved instrument of steel and wood in my arm, cradling it like a glistening infant Jesus, waiting, oh yes, waiting for that beautiful man with the camo shirt to come behind me like a silken lover in the night, coming to fill the chamber of this shotgun, this over-and-under break 12 gauge, with a shell stuffed full of steel balls, saying You're good to go, and the expectant click, the reassuring snap of a bent shotgun made straight. And now to my shoulder, against the shoulder bone, the bone they say is there to support the butt of the stock, there as in there because it was meant to be there since the beginning, since God above fused bone and blood and sinew together to make man erect, to make man designed of incisor to shred meat, shoulder to support gun. My elbows point outward like a bird preparing for flight, and I say Pull and the red disc archs into the field, it runs from my shell, my expulsion. The shotgun, when it explodes, is like a God thought, like lightning in a studio apartment, a pending revolution among a crowd of midgets gone wild. Like a wild horse beneath me. The small orange disc hasn't a chance. It shatters into rice crispies. I see this and I can't believe it because to believe it is to accept a miracle in the sky --- a result, a visible result in a world of recession, lies, disappointment, illusions, divorce. Something has happend and I made it happen. I can see that I made it happen. It feels good to finally hit a target.