The Crooked Line

I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.–Harvey Pekar

I recognize this guy
who went to your schools but flopped
at your cocktails. Nobody dropped
his name and you reply,
“He only learned to type”.
All right. But isn’t life
preponderantly rife
with typing? A guttersnipe
in your book, and a lout
in mine with angsty moves
on paper napkins and the grooves
of jazz establishing a route
to penscratch narratives
and all he has to show.
Respect. Because you never know.
All studies are comparative.

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Imagine…

…me in Think. With “Enablement”. And how about Jennifer Reeser?

Raintown Review

The Summer issue of the Raintown Review features a detail of my painting, Allegory of Lower Manhattan, Panel 1, on the cover. The image will be familiar to those who lift their eyes an inch. Inside is my sonnet “Niagara.” As is always the case, this issue is packed with really fine poetry and criticism from the metrical world. Lance Levens (check), Midge Goldberg (check), Paul Stevens (check), John Foy (check), Terese Coe (check). Check, check, and double Check the Raintown Review.

Here is:

Niagara

In Canada, the river opens up.
No fence obstructs the daybreak suicide
who comes hungover with his plastic cup
from the casino. He can roll and ride
a hundred yards—or ten, if he so chooses—
to that low-hung bank of thunder cloud
and simply disappear. The man who loses
wins in Canada! He checks out loud
and clear, his public and his private debt
obliterated. On the darkling lawn
and esplanade, he antes on a bet
and rallies with a hand out to the dawn,
a flailing number in the rolling score
past chain-link sparkling on the other shore.

The Basement Tapes

It’s the little fuck-ups that you come
to love. The evidence of cigarettes
and alcohol, the rattle in the drum,
and how a cardboard box of tape cassettes
presents the faded document of youth—
an open call already in the can
and cracking on a plastic wheel. The truth.
That sweet malfunction of the master plan.

___
Photo: “Larry and Ben” by T.R. Loyd