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Crime writer living in New York from Galway, Ireland. Previously published in Plots With Guns, Hardluck Stories, ThugLit and forthcoming in Demolition. Extensive submissions to Flashing in the Gutters.

Galway Gun by James M McGowan

I’m the Galway Gun

I shoot ‘cause I’m strong

I watch from the alley

For the vic to come along

I’ve waited too long

Listening to my song

Of bullet acrobatics

And recoil diphthongs

My uncle shot his head off

‘Cause he hated the song

That echoed through his mind

‘Cause he didn’t belong

I saw his brain matter

Sticking to the walls

And I lifted his revolver

From his favorite armchair

In case he wasn’t gone

I aimed the barrel strong

And blew his cerebellum

Across the clean chaise long

No one could figure

How he fired two rounds

As they measured all the angles

And pushed me back upstairs

Their minds couldn’t grasp

I was born a keen shot

I just said goodbye

The only way I could

It was a coup de grace

Just like a Mass

He just went to heaven

And never heard the splat