Apr 24
1. I never intended to live in Ohio again in the first place. After my first divorce, and all the ensuing debacles; a rehab here, probation there, a dab or two of homelessness, or years of barely clinging to a roof over my head, and I found myself drunk and alone a lot, watching the …
Apr 21
Parallel Lives Every city has one, a block God forgot, some unofficial war zone, demilitarized, but alive and active with all the usual suspects cops roust on periodic missions to clean up after some particularly rowdy disturbance, something so embarrassing, around election day, even the mayor is moved to act. After the votes have been …
Apr 17
Because, Brian I liked you at first, because your dad fixed a flat on my mom’s Pontiac in his robe, and because of your black jelly bean eyes and big-toothed laugh, and because you almost almost rubbed my thigh. But I bought off-the-shoulder homecoming velvet for someone else, because of your seaweed smell, because of …
Apr 16
abandoned by all things my brother phones late at night, he’s been drinking again, asking if I might write a few poetic lines in honor of our dead father so Richie G can temporarily immortalize the words on his forearm below the half-finished angel, a tribute to a dad he vaguely remembers from his early …
Mar 20
Gregory Corso: An Elder Scamp by Neeli Cherkovski Gregory Corso. There are days where I miss him terribly. It is difficult not to think of him as an elder scamp, yes, right out of some topsy-turvy Huckleberry Finn-like American night folded around the streets on both the East and West coast. He was a child …
Feb 02
Last Night I Sat Alone Last night I sat alone waiting for you on the ground in the sun under the oak, as I had waited long ago. The wind rustled the trees and the undergrowth. I drew with a stick in the sand what looked like a Mayan temple. My white t-shirt reflected the …
Jan 08
Night is a Man A man without hands, without feet. Night has nothing but eyes and ears and a scrap of heart. You left ten weeks ago, and Night is what I sleep with. Tonight, I wake Night up and take him to the grocery store. On the way there, Night looks at the moon, …
Jan 05
CLOWN GRAVY Vanilla Cupcake was talking shit again, talking about how she would give anything to get in my bed for one hour. One hour is all it would take. It ain’t nothin’ nice bein’ the only African-American in a circus full of wack ass crackers. Sometimes I drop my g’s. Nothin’. Bein’. I’m from …
