In Which Hemingway Examines Fitzgerald’s Penis by Molly Cimikoski

David, by Michelangelo (b. Italy), 1504.

In Which Hemingway Examines Fitzgerald’s Penis
 
Finally
when we were eating the cherry tart
and had a last carafe of
wine he said, “You know
I never slept with anyone
except Zelda.”
And so Scott went on
to detail for Hemingway
his shortcomings.
Or rather, a very specific
shortcoming. At least,
that’s what Zelda had told him.
 
The two men marched
from the bar
straight into the men’s room
so as to give Hem a better view
(the only surefire way to debunk a
fallacy of the phallus).
 
“That’s the oldest way in the world of putting people out of business,”
 
Hemingway reassured
(he never liked Zelda anyway).
He insisted that her
cruelty was unprompted,
that perhaps,
the angle from which Scott
viewed himself/made love
was to blame. A matter of degrees,
not of size—certainly!
 
But Scott still feared his manhood
wasn’t measuring up
and so Ernest, in an act of supreme loyalty, escorted
the young Casanova
to The Louvre in order to compare
his virility to the male statues. 
 
Ernest tried to convince him;
if it was good enough for Michelangelo,
surely Scott shouldn’t complain.
 
But Scott’s angst was not so easily assuaged.
 
Good enough to be eternalized in marble, surely,
but not good enough for his baboo.
 
Molly Cimikoski

*The lines in italicized text originally appeared in Ernest Hemingway’s, A Moveable Feast (Copyright 1964).

Molly Cimikoski was born and raised in beautiful New Hampshire, but now spends her days in sunny Santa Monica, California. She recently completed her master's degree in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University and is pursuing her goal of becoming a professor.