Two Poems By Andrew Hubbard

Andrew Hubbard was born and raised in a coastal Maine fishing village.  He earned degrees in English and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College and Columbia University, respectively.

For most of his career he has worked as Director of Training for major financial institutions, creating and delivering Sales, Management, and Technical training for user groups of up to 4,000.

He has had four prose books published, and his fifth book, a collection of poetry, was published in 2014 by Interactive Press.

He is a casual student of cooking and wine, a former martial arts instructor and competitive weight lifter, a collector of edged weapons, and a licensed handgun instructor.  He lives in rural Indiana with his family, two Siberian Huskies, and a demon cat.

Confirmed

I lie in long grass

With the spotter behind me.

He smells.  Probably I do too.

“Don’t be a judger,” my wife would say.

We are watching the doorway

Of a pretty, bamboo cottage

Eight hundred yards dead ahead.

I’ve adjusted the rifle on its tiny tripod for the distance

And a fitful breeze from the east.

The light couldn’t be better.

Mosquitoes and firebugs bore in

There’s nothing to do but take it.

It’s 100 degrees.  I hydrate

From a backpack and pee

Into the special pants they give us.

The worst thing is the time.

We know that going in, but it is very difficult.

Eight hours, then ten, then twelve,

Fourteen.  At about eighteen

He appears in the doorway

I know him by his medals.

Why are they so stupid to wear their medals?

The spotter with his sixty power scope

Says, “target confirmed, take him.”

I squeeze the trigger as though I were touching my wife.

The rifle whispers, “phut.”

There is an agonizing, eternal, two-second pause

And then the man’s arms fly out sideways

And he hurls back into the cottage darkness.

“Confirmed,” says the spotter

And we shimmy a mile back

To the river.  I have R and R in Bangkok

Where the most beautiful girls in the world

Cost fifty dollars a week,

Introduce you shyly to their family, 

And cry when you leave them.

By then the nightmares have stopped

And I’m ready to do it

One more time.

Poet Andrew Hubbard

Not Hiring

When TJ Maxx closes

And re-opens as Payday Loans

You know your town has a problem.

The want ads used to fill three pages

In the local paper.  Now—

Barely one.  I stopped reading them

Three?  six? months ago.  Most of the jobs

Are commission only, or they don’t exist,

Or they have a catch, like you have to take

A thousand dollar training course,

Or buy a franchise.

Thank god my wife works!

At the donut shop downtown.

She got the arthritis in her hips.

It hurts so bad, on her days off

She usually doesn’t get out of bed.

But the donut shop won’t give benefits

So what are we gonna do?

The wife, she found a way

To steal donut dough from the shop.

She brings home a two pound baggie

Almost every day.

She jokes, “thank god I’m so fat

I can hide the bag on me

And nobody thinks nothin’ of it.”

At first we were ashamed.

Now we’re just glad to have the dough.

She found some way to bake it up

Into loaves of something like bread.

We eat it with lard.  Or crabapples

I get from the run-down farm across the way.

I used to spend my days

Watching television and shooting pool.

The television is long gone

And the poolroom is out of the question.

Now, I swear I don’t know

How the days go by

But somehow each one ends

And then another one begins.

I used to worry a lot,

Now I don’t even care

Enough to worry.