Richard Vargas, The Screw City Poems, 2025, 136 pages, $18
If you were expecting heavily charged erotica here due to the title, Screw City you will likely be disappointed. Not that there isn’t sex, there is some, married, break up sex, hook up sex but “Screw City” refers to a small midwestern city (Rockford, IL) that was once known for manufacturing screws (much like the town where our son taught Westfield, MA is “buggy whip city” (really!) and once upon a time Utica, N.Y. where I went to college, was “Handshake City”)
This collection is a kind of “Best of Vargas” compiling poems from four previous collections that were published over the years. These are all crisp narratives often depicting the drudgery of working nowhere jobs that everyone needs to do, at some point, just to get by. Vargas is as good as anyone at revealing just how demeaning, senseless and frustrating these jobs can be. The collection closes with an excerpt of a prose work in progress that has a promising direction though you just know the bar hookups (those St Pauli girls) are going to get you to a place you don’t want to be, somewhere along the line.
