Featuring Kevin Ridgeway

NO TIME FOR LOSERS

 

We both lay here in our adjacent beds,

my roommate at the sober living and I, 

his cheap old transistor radio dialed into 

K-Earth 101, Queen screaming that 

We Are the Champions of the World.

Both of us jobless, stabilized by a trove 

of psychiatric medication, enough to 

sedate an elephant, too foggy to rule 

the world.  My roommate shares all

of his manic delusions with me, and 

I’ll keep on fighting to the end to keep 

my own sanity while he jabbers on 

about the Russians and Boy George, 

how they are tapping his phone, which 

rests on his bare fat belly, rising up 

and down in victory breaths, my 

roommate shirtless while he waits 

for his deodorant to dry so he can go 

downstairs and mop the dining room 

floor. While he does that, I sweep 

the carpeted stairs that lead up to 

our second story room to make our 

landlord happy we finished our chores,

then back to a life whose soundtrack 

is K-Earth, conversations surreal 

paintings on the ceiling we stare at 

together all day, trapped here inside 

a sideshow nobody would pay to see.  

 

 

 

 

SON OF A PHANTOM INMATE

 

I go for my evening walk 

& I pass a car whose driver 

has got their phone on speaker:

THIS IS A COLLECT CALL

FROM A STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

& I want to accept the call

with the expectation it’s my father 

on the other line, serving life 

in prison in one hand,

battling lung cancer in the other.

I haven’t heard his voice

in months and I don’t hear it now,

a letter in the mail with my number

sent along two weeks ago

just in case he lost it.  

THIS IS A COLLECT CALL

FROM A STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY 

is automated music to the ears 

of my desperate sonic reach 

to know him in this world again,

so much time lost only to be waved 

in my face with a brute slap 

against the loud walls of my mind,

where memories of my father 

sit at an organ and play, unmasked:

so ugly they’re beautiful—

I hope we share this again,

the scars hidden in our DNA.  

 

 

 

 

LOW PATIENT CENSUS

 

There’s no one yelling,

no meltdowns, no crisis—

in fact, the entire back patio

of my treatment center 

is encased in holy silence:

only ghosts of patients past 

and me, serene enough 

to walk out of here, 

but this is my headcase

sanctuary.  Strands of smoke

from my cigarette rotate 

into warped mandalas 

rising out over the fence

into the adjacent alleyway

where nirvana is interrupted 

by a homeless man’s 

dirty chain-linked fence 

request for a spare smoke, 

which I push through to him, 

an inmate of the streets 

I am reprieved from for now, 

hidden in a seaside ghetto,

blessed by Medicare 

and Medicaid 

smooth sailing today 

not a bothersome motherfucker

to suck the wind out of me 

and lead me to drown.

 

 

 

 

COST OF LIVING

 

wars

tornadoes 

hurricanes

earthquakes 

cancer 

viruses 

mental illness:

we all have 

our own 

disasters, 

buried 

in the debt

of fate

FAMILY PHYSICAL

I was five years old

and my brother was 13.

We both sat in the

examination room

of the doctor's office

in nothing

but our white Fruit of the Loom

brand jockeys, our mother

waiting with us, our clothes

piled high in her lap.

I wonder what she thought

as she watched us argue

and punch each other, 

two young men she went

through so much pain

to carry into the world

and make sacrifices for

only to look on, helpless

at the older of her two sons

taught the younger one

how to make a fart sound

with his armpit and his hand,

and we continue to flap

our pasty arms in

a raunchy symphony

to announce the entrance

of the family practitioner,

who gave our poor mother

one long and dirty look

that told her neither one

of us would ever be cured.

 

 

 

 

AS SEEN ON TV

 

I mimicked film and cartoon characters,

adventure heroes, even villains if their 

skin was more comfortable than my own, 

blonde hair and pale flesh I wanted 

to discard for a dark complexion 

and a jet black pompadour 

like Lou Diamond Phillips in La Bamba,

a dark handsome knock to the jugular 

on a Fender Stratocaster, 

ladies tearing me apart at concert's end–

no more autographs, please.

No plane crash with Buddy and the Bopper

for me, either, I always rose from

the living room carpet with only minor rug burn, 

sleep in my eyes, tired already of having 

better lives waved in my dream-weary face.

BIO: Kevin Ridgeway is a Southern California native currently based in Long Beach. His books include  "Too Young to Know" (Stubborn Mule Press) and "Invasion of the Shadow People" (Luchador Press). His work has appeared The Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Big Hammer, Trailer Park Quarterly, Misfit Magazine, Cultural Daily, Spillway and the American Journal of Poetry, among others.