Four Poems After Hemingway Photographs, by Julene Waffle

Before He Was Papa
 
after Untitled (Italians Playing Cards, Village, NY) photography by Ilse Bing (USA) 1936 
https://whitney.org/collection/works/15893

Before the war, before the women,  
deep sea marlins and scarred hands. 
Before Cuba and Pilar and his six toed cat,

a young Hemingway passed our sidewalk 
card game on the way to the grocery for his mother.
He felt he was no one then. 

His skinny arms hadn't built themselves 
hard and bearlike yet. His chest 
hadn't barreled. His face still had a boyish turn.

As young men often hint in their lanky 
arms and long legs, he had filling out to do. 
He walked past our game 

with sidelong interest and then turned, 
and came back to watch,
serious on his face. 

Even then, sharks swam his thoughts--
He wanted to do something 
his mother wouldn't approve. 

Written across his face, 
like the short lines on his father's palm 
or leaves his mother would never read in

the bottom of her tea cup, 
was the man he meant to be.
When we folded and the winner picked 

his winnings, I nodded at the empty 
seat and asked, "You want in?"
Before Finca Vigia, before running 

with the bulls in Spain or lion hunting 
in Africa, plane crashes, war, or suicide,
in the steep inhalation of surprise,

there was a hesitation, and then 
with a jingle of change in his pocket, 
and a rapping of the reins on his life, 

he sat on the open crate and said, 
"My name is Ernest,"
and I believed he was.

**

If Hemingway Rode a Bicycle in the First Tour de France
            
after The First Tour de France, photography from The Nationaal Archief/The Hague (France) 1903
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/07/22/137828661/photo-first-tour-de-france-winner-1903

Hemingway was four years old 
when Maurice Garin 
won the first Tour de France.
 
He could not have listened to the race
on the radio. Macroni had just sent 
the first broadcasts out.
He could not have imagined the thick legged
swarthy man in a newsboy cap.
But if he had, I am sure he would have 
turned creature-ready, throttling into the race,
singing a catchy fugue,
tucking a lucky penny in his pocket,
kissing a woman in white full on,
leaving her pink and panting
before pedaling off
to chase switchbacks around
cliffs without noticing the views.
 
I am sure he would have donned goggles
and maybe would have stripped to the waist,
his chest hair and mustache pressed flat
with the speed of steep his descent.  

**

A Farewell to Arms

after Hemingway On Safari. photography by Earl Theisen (USA) 1952
https://photos.com/featured/hemingway-on-safari-earl-theisen-collection.html

Hemingway sits at his friend’s desk
writing parts of A Farewell to Arms.
Forty-seven times he rewrote the ending,
30 times he’s made the journey around the sun,
only 31 one more until 
his last mark on the world is made. 
But for now, he sits at that desk
in an uncomfortable chair,
rewriting,
in Piggot, Arkansas,
while his son is being 
born 72,000 miles away

​**

Not That I Mind
  
after Untitled (Men in Bar), photography  by Gertjan Bartelsman (Colombia, b. Netherlands) c. 1980
https://www.phillips.com/detail/gertjan-bartelsman/UK040217/7

Once somewhere in Cuba in a whitewashed bar
with sweating walls and hungry men,
Hemingway once challenged me to arm wrestle.
What does one say to that?  
Certainly not no.  

His shirt was casually unbuttoned 
and he pulled at the collar as if to cool himself, 
but there was no cooling--  
the fan was broken and we all sat sweltering
at the tables, leaning on the walls,
drinking our drinks.  

His grip was firm as we braided our arms.
The table, grooved by too many men 
with pocket knives and centavos,
dug at my elbow, but it didn’t matter.

His forearm was thick and his bicep strained 
at the sleeve he had rolled up as far as he could.
He didn’t look like a writer 
who leaned into his typewriter each morning,
who penned notes on drafts, squinted at endings 
then crumpled them into the trash, thirty times thirty times. 
Instead his great barrel chest and bear-hands 
said athlete, bravado, machismo, monolith.

Pearls of sweat hesitated 
in his beard before dropping onto the table.  
Too humid for even the wood to soak up, 
they domed and caught 
the inverted onlookers, the upside down room, 
the white ceiling fan that wouldn’t turn and us, 
one on each side squatting on our heads at that table.

Three drops I lasted.  
That was all.  

He must have taken it easy on me.
As he held my struggle he drew the scene, 
laughed too loudly at a joke from across the room, 
turned and stared too long at another man’s woman.  

Three drops, 
and then he hammered my hand
into the table with a proud “Ah Ha” 
as if surprised, and turned to the knot of men 
around him and filled the room.

And what of me?  I was background
who now, at least, had a good story to tell.

​Julene Waffle
​

Julene Waffle, a graduate of Hartwick College and Binghamton University, is a teacher in rural NYS, an entrepreneur, a nature lover, a wife, a mother of three boys, two dogs, three cats, a bearded dragon, and, of course, she’s a writer. She finds pleasure in juggling these jobs while seeming like she has it all together. Her work has appeared in Sequestrum, The Adroit Journal Blog, NCTE’s English Journal, Mslexia, The Bangalore Review, The Ekphrastic Review among other journals and  anthologies and her chapbook So I Will Remember. Learn more at www.wafflepoetry.com.