From Nerve Cowboy #50, Winter 2022-2023
DJ'ing & Open Mic
My co-worker Steve deejays
for a club called CC Tap which
he soon comes to call CC Crap
for the amount of money they
pay him.
I host an open mic at an old theater
up on the mezzanine, scheduling
whiny boys with guitars who complain
how the current guy on stage
is hijacking the whole thing.
Steve knows when it's time to quit
his deejay side-hustle when girls start
writing their phone numbers down in
black eye-liner on scraps of paper,
waving and trying to hand them to
Steve up in the booth, all the while
clutching their $3 rum and cokes.
I know when it's time to quit the open mic
when the drunken dude, who works part-time
at the art gallery across the street, comes
in one night and drops a $200 painting
at my feet and says "I love what you do,
man. It's yours."
Liz Minette
Esko, MN
LOVE POEM FOR A DEAD JUNKIE
You overdosed to spite me
and it worked
I've been angry with you ever since.
The first time I saw you,
you were wearing a green silk T-shirt
and black leather pants.
We were standing in the doorway
of the loft where I broke my speed habit
and got acquainted with your body
and the soft ease of heroin.
We had some great times,
didn't we, Wil?
The whole thing was like a long walk
in a beautiful garden.
Suellen Luwish
Austin, TX
MAYBE THIS HAS
HAPPENED TO YOU
You wake up
covered with bruises
in a hotel room
next to a teenage hustler
named Tommy.
The last thing
you remember
is sharing a bottle
of Night Train,
speedballs
and a needle.
You're late
for your job--
your husband
has no idea
where you are,
and you realize,
not for the first time,
that you're pissing
your life away,
and that Tommy's
not exactly
off to a great
start either.
Suellen Luwish
Austin, TX
SLED RIDING, WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA, 1982
Very little cold weather this year
and only a couple days of snow.
My kids are pissed
that school never got canceled.
I'd be pissed too.
My favorite things
about school
were the cancelations.
So many nights I'd stay awake
and pray for enough snow
to stop busses
from climbing hills
or the school doors
to be frozen shut.
This February
it hit 70 degrees two times.
Our backyard turned to mud
with sticks of brown grass.
I remember Februaries with three
feet of snow on the ground
and 20 children riding sleds downhill.
My kids think downhill is a park
or a ski slope you pay for.
Where I lived we didn't know
who owned the land
or who would have wanted
to own hills made of coal slag
and woods half-bulldozed
the paths lined with tree
stumps and branches
and bulldozer tracks deep
enough to rumble our bikes.
I sprained my ankle that way.
I took a bend on the path
behind Kirk's house
and hit a thick tree root
and my sled turned sideways
and shot like a rock
from a slingshot
and I smashed into a stump.
An older neighbor had to pull me home
in my green sled, the whole way there
saying "You are so fucking fat.
No wonder you have a sprained ankle.
It's because you're so fucking fat"
and when I tried to explain
that I wasn't fat anymore
that I played sports and lifted weights
he said "Shut the fuck up, fatso"
and threatened to make me walk.
The pain was excruciating.
I thought I might pass out.
I knew enough not to cry
and the fear-doctor in my brain
said I'd broken my shin
and maybe I was in shock.
My neighbor pulled the sled
to the driveway and said
"Now walk, you lazy piece of shit"
and dropped the rope
and trudged through my yard
and up the street to his own house.
I couldn't stand
so I rolled to my belly
and crawled to our backdoor and banged
on the bottom part of the screen.
Inside, my mom unzipped
my snowsuit and took
my gloves and hat and helped
work the snow boot off my foot.
The ankle was blue and swollen.
My mom said "Don't go to sleep."
I hopped to the car
and we drove to the hospital.
My mom held my hand
and steered with her other
and said calming things
though later she admitted
she was trying not to
throw up from nerves.
Neither of my kids has been hospitalized
for a sledding riding accident
or any kind of adventure.
Life is pretty safe
on the couch during
the warm winters we get now.
They like electronic stuff
and take lessons and play
organized sports and are able
to watch movies on demand.
In the emergency room
all those years ago
waiting for a doctor
my mom said
"What do you want
to talk about?" .
and I said "I don't know"
because I was so tired
and so afraid of needles
and hospitals and doctors
and she said
"There has to be something"
and I said
"Do you think I'll get a shot?"
snd she said
"Oh, I doubt it"
and she kept talking
saying reassuring things
trying to keep me from shock
until she said
"It was so nice of Jeff
to pull you home."
I nodded because she was right.
I didn't like being called a fat fuck
but the ride was much nicer
than freezing to death in the snow.
Dave Newman
Trafford, PA
CLUMSY ATTEMPT AT CRITICAL THINKING
Is anyone left who doesn't grasp that
"The Serpent" in the Hebrew creation myth
was symbolic of Adam's penis;
that the MEN who jotted that archaic story
on papyrus 2000+ years ago
in what became Genesis
placed all the blame on Eve for Adam's
seducing (or more likely raping) her?
That the most primeval root
of Abrahamic religions
is victim-blaming?
Michael Hathaway
Saint John, KS
POEM
This guy sang opera on 57th St.,
canteen around his neck he never
seemed to drink from, spittle
at the corners of his mouth.
Years he was there, loud, off key,
Italian operas, I'd guess, by the sound
of the words I didn't understand.
Terrible voice, glazed, far away stare.
Some writer photographer once
put together a book on New York
street performers, a little interview
on the side of each photo. I spotted
the opera singer while thumbing
the pages in the Strand bookstore.
Two years I saw that guy everyday
as I entered a building for a job I barely
endured. He was going to make it big,
he proclaimed, become a great like
Pavarotti, all he had to do was keep
practicing, the world would knock
on his door. The poor man in his tweed
jacket had no talent other than self-delusion.
He worked hard, year after year, arriving
at his spot before eight a.m., still there
after five. I almost gave up writing
when I saw his picture in that book,
his explanation for how he believed
things would unfold. Several years
I'd been at it with nothing but rejections.
Only a fool would have continued.
Michael Flanagan
Stratford, PEI, Canada
ON THE NIGHT OF YOUR 40TH BIRTHDAY
you called me from your garage.
It was the first time I'd heard
the drunk, throaty timbre of your voice,
outside my own head, in close to 15 years.
It was familiar, relaxed
the way we slipped into old times,
like we were lying across the dirty, red rug
on the floor of your room, with a sixpack
and a spray of unfinished poems between us.
I poured a glass of wine, and we quietly talked
while our spouses slept in untroubled dreams.
I never knew what to call you back then,
in those days of the twenty-something haze
when we kept falling into each other's beds
like another bad habit
we'd eventually have to give up.
My name would not be enshrined
in your poems, never your muse,
at least that's what I'd always believed.
But when you sent me that Jeffrey McDaniel poem,
like a secondhand regret, it was almost as good
as the beer-garbled apology
that took 18 years to get to me.
I hung the phone up that night
with an unexpected flash of relief.
Drinking myself into soberness, over the course
of our three-hour conversation,
I told you goodbye,
then got into bed next to my husband.
Stretching my bare leg across the
the length of our mattress, I found his body,
warm and reassuring.
My psyche drifting like a lost ship, steering
toward the dock of his slow, steady breaths.
Beverly Hennessy Summa
South Salem, NY
SO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE TO BE
Dad said it was truly the "season of the witch"
as we drove closer to his best friend's funeral.
He started to tell me about this album called
Super Session with three sidemen named
Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills.
He was adamant about the fact that I needed
to hear their cover of the Donovan song
he referenced. I opened what turned out to
be the last gift my father wrapped for me
on the eve of his relapse. The innocent young
bank tellers were terrified when he passed notes
with the threat of his gun and took off with
thousands of dollars to numb a pain he tried
to outrun his entire life, money none of the cops
could find in the dysfunctional rubble of our
broken home during a raid that resulted in
my father's sentence to life in prison and those
three young musicians looked at me from
the old album sleeve, three midnight headcases
playing endless vibes, the soundtrack to a
sinister revolution my Dad lost himself in
the brass and keyboard-driven funk that made
everything in between my ears melt over my
chilled spine, the resulting moans inspired by
our existential angst on a moonlit drive into
a violent barrio where his homeboy was laid
out in an open casket, waxen and long gone.
His eyes were sealed and his ears forever unable
to hear the spooky midnight song my father played
for me during the darkest hours of our lives.
Kevin Ridgeway
Long Beach, CA
BLUE WIFE IMAGINES HER HOUSE IS BURNING
for Donna Hilbert
how she stands by, waits to call the fire dept.
Goodbye, she waves, to her husband's collections,
as 5,000 movies melt frame by frame.
CDs crackle in their unwrapped cellophane,
vintage posters curl behind museum-quality glass.
Thirty years of vinyl warps and bends.
Here, she thinks are all the family vacations
we never had, the roof repairs. How many
flaming board games — their plastic markers
reduced to toxic rainbow-colored puddles
would it take to buy 21st century windows,
to fix the sunroom, paint the front porch?
How much has to burn before this space
feels like her own, before she is no longer
smothered?
Hayley Mitchell Haugen
Russell, KY
IDENTITY THEFT
I'm telling you, I don't know who I am. No one else knows, either. I've lost my phone, my money, my keys and ID. And now I can't find my boy. Maybe it's a robbery, or just a bad dream. The one where night falls early. The one where dead family shows up, and Cory, the first-grade bully who'd shadow me home, and the creepy neighbor with grabby hands from when I was ten. And there's Raul, a man I had a crush on in college. And my younger sister, deus ex machina, who swoops to my rescue (again) and gives me a twenty, but it blows away. When I ask her for another she shrugs, mutters something our mom used to say, about not throwing good money after bad. The man-crush from college asks me to lunch at a dingy cafeteria, so I know it must be a dream. Raul's been missing for decades. Presumed down over the Pacific, I overheard at our reunion. At the counter, I order grilled cheese on whole wheat, my son's favorite. Hard to fuck up grilled cheese. Raul, in front of me in line, pays, I think, for both of us. But the cashier puts out his hand, says, That'll be $5.50, please. Then I wake up hungry. And my ID, keys, and my boy are still gone. It's one of those days, straw yellow light, windless. Second summer they call it, that brief, ephemeral part of October brimming with magic and hot, torpid air. Days listless as my sister recovering from a summer cold, as still as my dead boy.
Alexis Rhone Fancher
San Pedro, CA
MARCH 17
Every Saint Patrick's Day,
I remember my younger brother
crying when my father made him
march in the neighborhood parade
wearing a shiny green KISS ME
I'M IRISH button like a medal
on his chest. Nine years old,
he didn't want to kiss anybody
and we never wanted to be Irish,
not for one day a year, or one Sunday
a month, when my father picked John,
me or my sister to visit his mother
and forced us to hug her. She lived
in a three room, church-quiet, dark
and chilly apartment, would offer to put
a pot on. While they talked, smoked
cigarettes, I chewed on dry soda
crackers, then hid in the back room,
opened packs of baseball cards Dad
bought with the Sunday paper, hoped
we'd leave soon. All other weekends
our whole family drove to my mom's
Italian family, a three story house
filled with armfuls of cousins and stoves
overcrowded with pots of simmering sauce,
pans frying little meat balls on every floor
as Aunt Rosie and Josie, my Uncle Dom
and Grandpa, spoiled us all kinds of rotten.
Other than the way he could climb schoolyard
fences to snag fly balls in center field
and that Saturday he played softball against
The King and His Court on Wide World
Of Sports, my father never talked about
himself, except as a warning: no riding
the backs of busses threatening kids
for lunch money, no quitting school
at thirteen for tips on an ice truck during
the tail end of a depression like he did.
No one ever mentioned his father who
disappeared, his step-father, half sister
and brother, their move to a big plot
of land in Pennsylvania until they called
my father one Saturday night, explained
that all his mother's money had been spent,
they needed help to pay for the funeral,
properly bury her. It was a week-long
argument in our house that my father
ended by saying she's my mother,
I'll take care of the expenses and that
will be the last I have to do with them
and my mom, not happy, agreeing, as long
as he didn't make any of us go with him
though he didn't want to go alone.
At my father's funeral, before others filled
the chapel, my mom told me how his mother
tried to talk him out of marrying her, that dark
guinea girl and her just off the boat family,
how his step-father mistreated him, the way
Dad was too embarrassed to tell anyone about
the time he and his good for nothing friends
broke and entered into a car parts factory. First
timers, the judge sentenced them to probation
under their parents' recognizance and my dad's
step-father refused to sign, take him home. Sent
to Spofford, the prison made famous years later
by Mike Tyson, no one knows how long Dad stayed.
My mom said there's no forgiving, no never. Every
night she still prays his mom's Irish ass rots in hell.
Tony Gloeggler
Richmond Hill, NY
POETRY CONTEST
when i was 15
i won a poetry contest
& my mother was so proud
Oit was about a spider trapped
ETRYbetween window panes
that finally falls to the sill & dies
my father didn't understand
why i felt bad for the spider
"it's just a lousy fucking spider "
my mother said, "let's see you write a poem"
& she gave my father a slip of paper
& a pen
he scribbled something then pushed
the pen & paper towards my mother
she said read it to us
"go fuck a duck," he said
& that was it
later he made her put it up on
the refrigerator next to my poem
he said it was his refrigerator
so it had to go up on there too
& there they were side by side
my meditation on the death of a spider
& my father's two line masterpiece
now you know why i especially hate rhyme
Rob Plath
Medford, NY
THE SADDEST TREE IN THE CEMETERY
the saddest tree
in the cemetery
is no more
they cut it down
it didn't make
much of a sound
hitting the ground
so hollow & slim
the visitors give
a sigh of relief now
but i think the dead
preferred it there
the other trees
tho beautiful
were too busy holding
on to flowers & leaves
but the saddest tree
in the cemetery
loyally thought of
the dead all day long
its dark brittle arms
holding vigil over
rows of tombs
& at night
under the moon
its sad limbs half-spread
like a twisted dreamcatcher
full of ghostly woes
the visitors are in love
w / green
but i think the dead
miss the saddest tree
in the cemetery
Rob Plath
Medford, NY
CHAUTACUQUA
The bell tower on the pier chimed ten times
as I walked toward it with my guitar in hand.
The rickety old wooden dock on the lake
was completely covered in white bird shit.
The crow on the black peak of the roof
of the house cawed twice with great force.
There was a rising hum overhead
it did not sound like an airplane to me.
Scott Silsbe
Wilkinsburg, PA
ASTRO TURF
I was living in the middle of nowhere.
By nowhere I mean
a trailer park in the desert:
pink flamingos,
astro turf,
plastic flowers in the yard.
The old lady living next-door to me
kept a pistol in a Wonder Bread bag
near the eggs in the refrigerator.
Her trailer was plastered with posters
of the movies she had appeared in.
Her young, insolent face
stared at me through prison bars
whenever I came over for coffee.
Through her window
I could see her six inch crimson nails
in CLAWS OF A TIGRESS
while I fed the mocking birds
before work.
There was a photo of her son
in a wheelchair
on her nightstand,
his nurse kneeling beside him,
his tiny fingers squeezing her arm.
She kept his ashes
in a Folger's coffee jar
in the kitchen
by the stove.
I could hear her talking to him
while she fried Spam and eggs.
I was a waitress at Kay's Diner
off Highway 89A,
in the middle of nowhere.
By nowhere I mean
the young cook working there
made pancake faces
of demonic possession
and empty-eyed madness.
He spent his lunch breaks sketching old-timers
cracking wise at the counter,
their bodies disintegrating
into their stools,
their ancient faces
falling into a vortex
of steaming coffee.
I saw him changing out of his uniform
one day in the locker room.
His spine slithered left
and right.
There were scars on his shoulders,
looked like cigarette burns.
His boots were held together
with duct tape and staples.
When Kay found
his meat sculpture
suspended from the ceiling
of the the walk-in freezer
she screeched at him,
Clean out your locker
and don't ever come back!
The geezers at the counter
all told Kay
to give the kid another chance.
But he was already out the door.
Ripping off my polyester apron,
I ran outside to the gravel lot,
hopped on the back of his Norton,
my arms encircling his waist.
As he peeled out
Kay hollered,
Where the hell do you think you're going
with that little freak?
Nowhere, I whispered.
And by nowhere
I mean there was nothing
but the highway
and the fossils of beasts
that had crawled the sandy beaches
of a now extinct ocean
stretching out ahead of us
into the dwindling light.
Wendy Rainy
Anaheim, CA
DJ'ing & Open Mic
My co-worker Steve deejays
for a club called CC Tap which
he soon comes to call CC Crap
for the amount of money they
pay him.
I host an open mic at an old theater
up on the mezzanine, scheduling
whiny boys with guitars who complain
how the current guy on stage
is hijacking the whole thing.
Steve knows when it's time to quit
his deejay side-hustle when girls start
writing their phone numbers down in
black eye-liner on scraps of paper,
waving and trying to hand them to
Steve up in the booth, all the while
clutching their $3 rum and cokes.
I know when it's time to quit the open mic
when the drunken dude, who works part-time
at the art gallery across the street, comes
in one night and drops a $200 painting
at my feet and says "I love what you do,
man. It's yours."
Liz Minette
Esko, MN
LOVE POEM FOR A DEAD JUNKIE
You overdosed to spite me
and it worked
I've been angry with you ever since.
The first time I saw you,
you were wearing a green silk T-shirt
and black leather pants.
We were standing in the doorway
of the loft where I broke my speed habit
and got acquainted with your body
and the soft ease of heroin.
We had some great times,
didn't we, Wil?
The whole thing was like a long walk
in a beautiful garden.
Suellen Luwish
Austin, TX
MAYBE THIS HAS
HAPPENED TO YOU
You wake up
covered with bruises
in a hotel room
next to a teenage hustler
named Tommy.
The last thing
you remember
is sharing a bottle
of Night Train,
speedballs
and a needle.
You're late
for your job--
your husband
has no idea
where you are,
and you realize,
not for the first time,
that you're pissing
your life away,
and that Tommy's
not exactly
off to a great
start either.
Suellen Luwish
Austin, TX
SLED RIDING, WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA, 1982
Very little cold weather this year
and only a couple days of snow.
My kids are pissed
that school never got canceled.
I'd be pissed too.
My favorite things
about school
were the cancelations.
So many nights I'd stay awake
and pray for enough snow
to stop busses
from climbing hills
or the school doors
to be frozen shut.
This February
it hit 70 degrees two times.
Our backyard turned to mud
with sticks of brown grass.
I remember Februaries with three
feet of snow on the ground
and 20 children riding sleds downhill.
My kids think downhill is a park
or a ski slope you pay for.
Where I lived we didn't know
who owned the land
or who would have wanted
to own hills made of coal slag
and woods half-bulldozed
the paths lined with tree
stumps and branches
and bulldozer tracks deep
enough to rumble our bikes.
I sprained my ankle that way.
I took a bend on the path
behind Kirk's house
and hit a thick tree root
and my sled turned sideways
and shot like a rock
from a slingshot
and I smashed into a stump.
An older neighbor had to pull me home
in my green sled, the whole way there
saying "You are so fucking fat.
No wonder you have a sprained ankle.
It's because you're so fucking fat"
and when I tried to explain
that I wasn't fat anymore
that I played sports and lifted weights
he said "Shut the fuck up, fatso"
and threatened to make me walk.
The pain was excruciating.
I thought I might pass out.
I knew enough not to cry
and the fear-doctor in my brain
said I'd broken my shin
and maybe I was in shock.
My neighbor pulled the sled
to the driveway and said
"Now walk, you lazy piece of shit"
and dropped the rope
and trudged through my yard
and up the street to his own house.
I couldn't stand
so I rolled to my belly
and crawled to our backdoor and banged
on the bottom part of the screen.
Inside, my mom unzipped
my snowsuit and took
my gloves and hat and helped
work the snow boot off my foot.
The ankle was blue and swollen.
My mom said "Don't go to sleep."
I hopped to the car
and we drove to the hospital.
My mom held my hand
and steered with her other
and said calming things
though later she admitted
she was trying not to
throw up from nerves.
Neither of my kids has been hospitalized
for a sledding riding accident
or any kind of adventure.
Life is pretty safe
on the couch during
the warm winters we get now.
They like electronic stuff
and take lessons and play
organized sports and are able
to watch movies on demand.
In the emergency room
all those years ago
waiting for a doctor
my mom said
"What do you want
to talk about?" .
and I said "I don't know"
because I was so tired
and so afraid of needles
and hospitals and doctors
and she said
"There has to be something"
and I said
"Do you think I'll get a shot?"
snd she said
"Oh, I doubt it"
and she kept talking
saying reassuring things
trying to keep me from shock
until she said
"It was so nice of Jeff
to pull you home."
I nodded because she was right.
I didn't like being called a fat fuck
but the ride was much nicer
than freezing to death in the snow.
Dave Newman
Trafford, PA
CLUMSY ATTEMPT AT CRITICAL THINKING
Is anyone left who doesn't grasp that
"The Serpent" in the Hebrew creation myth
was symbolic of Adam's penis;
that the MEN who jotted that archaic story
on papyrus 2000+ years ago
in what became Genesis
placed all the blame on Eve for Adam's
seducing (or more likely raping) her?
That the most primeval root
of Abrahamic religions
is victim-blaming?
Michael Hathaway
Saint John, KS
POEM
This guy sang opera on 57th St.,
canteen around his neck he never
seemed to drink from, spittle
at the corners of his mouth.
Years he was there, loud, off key,
Italian operas, I'd guess, by the sound
of the words I didn't understand.
Terrible voice, glazed, far away stare.
Some writer photographer once
put together a book on New York
street performers, a little interview
on the side of each photo. I spotted
the opera singer while thumbing
the pages in the Strand bookstore.
Two years I saw that guy everyday
as I entered a building for a job I barely
endured. He was going to make it big,
he proclaimed, become a great like
Pavarotti, all he had to do was keep
practicing, the world would knock
on his door. The poor man in his tweed
jacket had no talent other than self-delusion.
He worked hard, year after year, arriving
at his spot before eight a.m., still there
after five. I almost gave up writing
when I saw his picture in that book,
his explanation for how he believed
things would unfold. Several years
I'd been at it with nothing but rejections.
Only a fool would have continued.
Michael Flanagan
Stratford, PEI, Canada
ON THE NIGHT OF YOUR 40TH BIRTHDAY
you called me from your garage.
It was the first time I'd heard
the drunk, throaty timbre of your voice,
outside my own head, in close to 15 years.
It was familiar, relaxed
the way we slipped into old times,
like we were lying across the dirty, red rug
on the floor of your room, with a sixpack
and a spray of unfinished poems between us.
I poured a glass of wine, and we quietly talked
while our spouses slept in untroubled dreams.
I never knew what to call you back then,
in those days of the twenty-something haze
when we kept falling into each other's beds
like another bad habit
we'd eventually have to give up.
My name would not be enshrined
in your poems, never your muse,
at least that's what I'd always believed.
But when you sent me that Jeffrey McDaniel poem,
like a secondhand regret, it was almost as good
as the beer-garbled apology
that took 18 years to get to me.
I hung the phone up that night
with an unexpected flash of relief.
Drinking myself into soberness, over the course
of our three-hour conversation,
I told you goodbye,
then got into bed next to my husband.
Stretching my bare leg across the
the length of our mattress, I found his body,
warm and reassuring.
My psyche drifting like a lost ship, steering
toward the dock of his slow, steady breaths.
Beverly Hennessy Summa
South Salem, NY
SO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE TO BE
Dad said it was truly the "season of the witch"
as we drove closer to his best friend's funeral.
He started to tell me about this album called
Super Session with three sidemen named
Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills.
He was adamant about the fact that I needed
to hear their cover of the Donovan song
he referenced. I opened what turned out to
be the last gift my father wrapped for me
on the eve of his relapse. The innocent young
bank tellers were terrified when he passed notes
with the threat of his gun and took off with
thousands of dollars to numb a pain he tried
to outrun his entire life, money none of the cops
could find in the dysfunctional rubble of our
broken home during a raid that resulted in
my father's sentence to life in prison and those
three young musicians looked at me from
the old album sleeve, three midnight headcases
playing endless vibes, the soundtrack to a
sinister revolution my Dad lost himself in
the brass and keyboard-driven funk that made
everything in between my ears melt over my
chilled spine, the resulting moans inspired by
our existential angst on a moonlit drive into
a violent barrio where his homeboy was laid
out in an open casket, waxen and long gone.
His eyes were sealed and his ears forever unable
to hear the spooky midnight song my father played
for me during the darkest hours of our lives.
Kevin Ridgeway
Long Beach, CA
BLUE WIFE IMAGINES HER HOUSE IS BURNING
for Donna Hilbert
how she stands by, waits to call the fire dept.
Goodbye, she waves, to her husband's collections,
as 5,000 movies melt frame by frame.
CDs crackle in their unwrapped cellophane,
vintage posters curl behind museum-quality glass.
Thirty years of vinyl warps and bends.
Here, she thinks are all the family vacations
we never had, the roof repairs. How many
flaming board games — their plastic markers
reduced to toxic rainbow-colored puddles
would it take to buy 21st century windows,
to fix the sunroom, paint the front porch?
How much has to burn before this space
feels like her own, before she is no longer
smothered?
Hayley Mitchell Haugen
Russell, KY
IDENTITY THEFT
I'm telling you, I don't know who I am. No one else knows, either. I've lost my phone, my money, my keys and ID. And now I can't find my boy. Maybe it's a robbery, or just a bad dream. The one where night falls early. The one where dead family shows up, and Cory, the first-grade bully who'd shadow me home, and the creepy neighbor with grabby hands from when I was ten. And there's Raul, a man I had a crush on in college. And my younger sister, deus ex machina, who swoops to my rescue (again) and gives me a twenty, but it blows away. When I ask her for another she shrugs, mutters something our mom used to say, about not throwing good money after bad. The man-crush from college asks me to lunch at a dingy cafeteria, so I know it must be a dream. Raul's been missing for decades. Presumed down over the Pacific, I overheard at our reunion. At the counter, I order grilled cheese on whole wheat, my son's favorite. Hard to fuck up grilled cheese. Raul, in front of me in line, pays, I think, for both of us. But the cashier puts out his hand, says, That'll be $5.50, please. Then I wake up hungry. And my ID, keys, and my boy are still gone. It's one of those days, straw yellow light, windless. Second summer they call it, that brief, ephemeral part of October brimming with magic and hot, torpid air. Days listless as my sister recovering from a summer cold, as still as my dead boy.
Alexis Rhone Fancher
San Pedro, CA
MARCH 17
Every Saint Patrick's Day,
I remember my younger brother
crying when my father made him
march in the neighborhood parade
wearing a shiny green KISS ME
I'M IRISH button like a medal
on his chest. Nine years old,
he didn't want to kiss anybody
and we never wanted to be Irish,
not for one day a year, or one Sunday
a month, when my father picked John,
me or my sister to visit his mother
and forced us to hug her. She lived
in a three room, church-quiet, dark
and chilly apartment, would offer to put
a pot on. While they talked, smoked
cigarettes, I chewed on dry soda
crackers, then hid in the back room,
opened packs of baseball cards Dad
bought with the Sunday paper, hoped
we'd leave soon. All other weekends
our whole family drove to my mom's
Italian family, a three story house
filled with armfuls of cousins and stoves
overcrowded with pots of simmering sauce,
pans frying little meat balls on every floor
as Aunt Rosie and Josie, my Uncle Dom
and Grandpa, spoiled us all kinds of rotten.
Other than the way he could climb schoolyard
fences to snag fly balls in center field
and that Saturday he played softball against
The King and His Court on Wide World
Of Sports, my father never talked about
himself, except as a warning: no riding
the backs of busses threatening kids
for lunch money, no quitting school
at thirteen for tips on an ice truck during
the tail end of a depression like he did.
No one ever mentioned his father who
disappeared, his step-father, half sister
and brother, their move to a big plot
of land in Pennsylvania until they called
my father one Saturday night, explained
that all his mother's money had been spent,
they needed help to pay for the funeral,
properly bury her. It was a week-long
argument in our house that my father
ended by saying she's my mother,
I'll take care of the expenses and that
will be the last I have to do with them
and my mom, not happy, agreeing, as long
as he didn't make any of us go with him
though he didn't want to go alone.
At my father's funeral, before others filled
the chapel, my mom told me how his mother
tried to talk him out of marrying her, that dark
guinea girl and her just off the boat family,
how his step-father mistreated him, the way
Dad was too embarrassed to tell anyone about
the time he and his good for nothing friends
broke and entered into a car parts factory. First
timers, the judge sentenced them to probation
under their parents' recognizance and my dad's
step-father refused to sign, take him home. Sent
to Spofford, the prison made famous years later
by Mike Tyson, no one knows how long Dad stayed.
My mom said there's no forgiving, no never. Every
night she still prays his mom's Irish ass rots in hell.
Tony Gloeggler
Richmond Hill, NY
POETRY CONTEST
when i was 15
i won a poetry contest
& my mother was so proud
Oit was about a spider trapped
ETRYbetween window panes
that finally falls to the sill & dies
my father didn't understand
why i felt bad for the spider
"it's just a lousy fucking spider "
my mother said, "let's see you write a poem"
& she gave my father a slip of paper
& a pen
he scribbled something then pushed
the pen & paper towards my mother
she said read it to us
"go fuck a duck," he said
& that was it
later he made her put it up on
the refrigerator next to my poem
he said it was his refrigerator
so it had to go up on there too
& there they were side by side
my meditation on the death of a spider
& my father's two line masterpiece
now you know why i especially hate rhyme
Rob Plath
Medford, NY
THE SADDEST TREE IN THE CEMETERY
the saddest tree
in the cemetery
is no more
they cut it down
it didn't make
much of a sound
hitting the ground
so hollow & slim
the visitors give
a sigh of relief now
but i think the dead
preferred it there
the other trees
tho beautiful
were too busy holding
on to flowers & leaves
but the saddest tree
in the cemetery
loyally thought of
the dead all day long
its dark brittle arms
holding vigil over
rows of tombs
& at night
under the moon
its sad limbs half-spread
like a twisted dreamcatcher
full of ghostly woes
the visitors are in love
w / green
but i think the dead
miss the saddest tree
in the cemetery
Rob Plath
Medford, NY
CHAUTACUQUA
The bell tower on the pier chimed ten times
as I walked toward it with my guitar in hand.
The rickety old wooden dock on the lake
was completely covered in white bird shit.
The crow on the black peak of the roof
of the house cawed twice with great force.
There was a rising hum overhead
it did not sound like an airplane to me.
Scott Silsbe
Wilkinsburg, PA
ASTRO TURF
I was living in the middle of nowhere.
By nowhere I mean
a trailer park in the desert:
pink flamingos,
astro turf,
plastic flowers in the yard.
The old lady living next-door to me
kept a pistol in a Wonder Bread bag
near the eggs in the refrigerator.
Her trailer was plastered with posters
of the movies she had appeared in.
Her young, insolent face
stared at me through prison bars
whenever I came over for coffee.
Through her window
I could see her six inch crimson nails
in CLAWS OF A TIGRESS
while I fed the mocking birds
before work.
There was a photo of her son
in a wheelchair
on her nightstand,
his nurse kneeling beside him,
his tiny fingers squeezing her arm.
She kept his ashes
in a Folger's coffee jar
in the kitchen
by the stove.
I could hear her talking to him
while she fried Spam and eggs.
I was a waitress at Kay's Diner
off Highway 89A,
in the middle of nowhere.
By nowhere I mean
the young cook working there
made pancake faces
of demonic possession
and empty-eyed madness.
He spent his lunch breaks sketching old-timers
cracking wise at the counter,
their bodies disintegrating
into their stools,
their ancient faces
falling into a vortex
of steaming coffee.
I saw him changing out of his uniform
one day in the locker room.
His spine slithered left
and right.
There were scars on his shoulders,
looked like cigarette burns.
His boots were held together
with duct tape and staples.
When Kay found
his meat sculpture
suspended from the ceiling
of the the walk-in freezer
she screeched at him,
Clean out your locker
and don't ever come back!
The geezers at the counter
all told Kay
to give the kid another chance.
But he was already out the door.
Ripping off my polyester apron,
I ran outside to the gravel lot,
hopped on the back of his Norton,
my arms encircling his waist.
As he peeled out
Kay hollered,
Where the hell do you think you're going
with that little freak?
Nowhere, I whispered.
And by nowhere
I mean there was nothing
but the highway
and the fossils of beasts
that had crawled the sandy beaches
of a now extinct ocean
stretching out ahead of us
into the dwindling light.
Wendy Rainy
Anaheim, CA
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