Sing Song Sonnet Persecuting the Poet

Miss Woman, over here, Woman I say,
Won’t you please join me for coffee today.
Don’t worry, of course, I like it done Dutch
For the Woman’s sake, I don’t pay for much.

Look, I’m reading a French Feminist play,
Women of Color, PC and OK.
I write modest poems, no rhyme and such;
Just true words, cautious tone—What? I can’t touch?

You’re late? You’re going? Give me time, don’t leave,
I’ll flip you the queen shoved down my shirt sleeve:
I’ve read Rich!
                         “You?”
                                     Yes, but she’s sure a bit—
(Uh oh, bad bet, no, wet, yet, won’t concede!)
I only meant she’s difficult to read!

Miss Woman, yes you, dear Woman I say,
Perhaps you would join me for tea today?

~~ from Spark Park: A Tale in Two Parts

pure, unadulterated mediocrity

"And when I reflected back on our post-prom trip to the Jersey Shore four years earlier, it occurred to me that some of the people who were still with us had since then gone to jail; some had sold and used drugs; most had drifted into lives of pure, unadulterated mediocrity; a few had babies they weren't prepared to raise; at least one had died. Charles and I were the only alumni from the group with our futures still intact, and that kind of bond doesn't easily unglue."

~~ from Losing My Cool by Thomas Chatterton Williams

how fond I waxed for thee

"But now, at the Spark’s entrance, Zak’s gaze turns to grin as crater-sized dimples reveal his true love. A couplet trespasses through his brain: “Oh park, dear Spark, how fond I waxed for thee/ while twiddling my thumbs in said Northern library.” Zak’s ebullience defies reason. Could he be fond for a depressed second-string city? Fond for a city park? From a cursory view, it seems like an ordinary park. At one end stand the half-eaten nets, at the other a jungly gym for children—logs, tires, pipes, and junk sculpted into a dog in crapper stance. Over the years, multitudes of . . . mutts have gotten the hint, and like many city parks, stale and fresh doggy doodoos dot the terrain."

~~ from Spark Park: A Tale in Two Parts

reading was his lone salvation

from Losing My Cool by Thomas Chatterton Williams

 

What Happened When My Wife Died

I hope to return to Charles Bock's "What Happened When My Wife Died."

the list of stolen books

"The fact that she didn't have genuine proof of identity, the way her accent shifted, like her grandfather's, the old guy's strange ideas, their peculiar way of life, even her skill at outwitting alarm systems: all of this suggested that our love affair had been a trick, not a trick performed by two human beings in order to deceive a third, but a product of my own delirious imagination. Except that I wasn't crazy, I had proof that both of them existed: the list of stolen books, Ahmed's testimony (unless he was in on the scheme), and Juana's, and the hospital bills."

~~ from Severina by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

my body's weight on my thumbs

"Forget it, okay? Back to reality, please; back to my life. I’d listen to Avi after so many years, but I’d never turn to rigorous calisthenics; I’d never do push-ups, never mind sets of fifty with my body’s weight on my thumbs. Unfit, if not incontrovertibly destroyed, I didn’t care for his recommendations. Yet Avi was an old friend, and I hardly knew any of the others I’ve described.

"Teaching abroad in Suzhou, China, there was no bird—no cardinal or goldfinch—but back in the states, there was an old friend’s phone call—about the life I would never have unless I took action—which reminded me of working abroad and disappeared youth; a butcher’s knife swung at the air above an old friend’s throat; an imagined bird; and a brief, if emphatic, encounter with a Korean-American adolescent in a basement shopping mall."

Paul Klee's Fish Magic

the bookseller with literary aspirations

"Bookshops are infested with ideas. Books are quivering, murmuring creatures. That's what one of my business partners used to say. He was a poet, quite a clever guy (though not as clever as he thought), and likable enough. There's something to it: the three little Russian books stood there on the shelf next to the cash register for several days, murmuring, quivering, preserving her memory, but she didn't return. Those were eventful days, or rather I heard that they'd been eventful (there was a rash of lynchings in the inland villages and a coup in a neighboring country, cocaine became the world's number one illicit substance, stagnant water was discovered on Mars, and Pluto definitely lost its status as a planet), my life having shrunk once more to the ambit of books; I had become another specimen of that sad type, the bookseller with literary aspirations."

~~ from Severina by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Uncle Sam's Decline

I was excited to see that The Airgonaut published "Uncle Sam's Decline," an excerpt from Spark Park. Previously published excerpts from my true first novel appear as "Persecuting the Poet" at Malarkey Books and "Night Shift" at Revolution John.