or total body tattoos
showing everywhere
there’d been bare skin;
or big bad clodhoppers;

or high-healed black boots -
I tried not to stand out
too much by standing to
clap in the hip Hollywood

SRO bookstore, when the
crowd rose in unison
as if we were in a
stadium or concert hall

to cheer the speakers
who in reality were
rock ‘n roll stars from
the ’80′s band Primus and

Guided by Voices, here
gone literary to pitch
their debut novels, which
judging by what was

read outloud batted five
hundred, the first excellent
- funny, interesting,
universally appealing -

except for too many
fart, piss, shit and zit
jokes and references
to all manner of drugs

entering the body by
every conceivable route
and cavity – while the
second struck out, no

doubt, no way Artificial
Light would’ve ever
landed a publisher
if Z were not a

CD-selling celeb
though in all honesty
I’d never heard of either
pop group before.

Both men (actually
one was just a boy)
dwelt obsessively
on death, which each

obviously felt was
both very cool
to write about and
very cool of Kurt

to have done, but
something that was
not on the horizon
for themselves.

It was an extremely
hot night in Los Angeles
with the electric grid
gone out earlier that

afternoon (Greek lunch
in the chic Larchmont
District), so no one was
all that surprised

when halfway through
the questions and answers
session (by far the cutest
girl in the middle front row

breathlessly asked X
where he’d found such
a beautiful shirt and
what his necklace meant?)

the A/C went down and
it got awfully warm as
a Skylight clerk tried
to made light of it until

presto, the owner emerged
with candles that he
lit to make it less dark
and even a bit romantic,

imploring the audience
to take care since his
precious hardbacks were
extremely flammable.

Some of the less happy
campers decided to
pass on the rest of the
evening — it’s still not

certain exactly what
happened to the three
teeny boppers that
made them scream -

and rushed the exit,
which they soon
found was locked,
requiring the power

to go on before the door’d
open –or at least that’s
what the management
claimed, although a

woman who said she
was a safety technician
shouted out that was
a pure ruse (b*** s***)

used to assure that
nobody sneaked out
without paying for
merchandise, since

the normal security
system’s invisible
eye device obviously
was on the fritz.

To make a long story
short, after the riot (really
no big deal, just a few
muscle-shirted goateed

guys in fedoras throwing
chairs ’til the storefront
window broke), the folks
who stayed had the time

of our lives, all for
one and one for all,
swaying alongside
the sexy rockers who

by now’d pulled their
acoustic guitars from
the cases, preparing
to strum old favorites,

and we whooped out
almost a play list from
Bill Graham’s Winterland
days, and I sang right along…

“Rat in a drain ditch,
caught on a limb, you
know better but I know
him. Like I told you,
what I said, steal your
face right off your head…”

til the juice came
back on, and all the gang

remaining there hugged,
leaving at least one geezer
Deadhead and another
Jerry may he RIP, ecstatic.

————

Gerard Sarnat splits time between his San Francisco Bay Area forest home and Southern California’s beaches, where he and his wife care for their first grandson. Gerry is a father of three, physician to the disenfranchised, past CEO and Stanford professor, and virginal writer ’til the recent tender age of sixty-two. He has been published or is forthcoming in EZAAPP, The Hiss Quarterly, Pens on Fire, Poets Against War, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, Flutter, Jack, Atavar, Wilderness House Review, Aha!Poetry, Spindle, Black Zinnias,The Furnace Review, and Stonetable Review among others. “Just Like the Jones’,” about his experience caring for Jonestown survivors, was solicited by The Jonestown Annual Report and will appear later this year. Gerry is currently working on an epic prose poem, “The Homeless Chronicles.” He has been accepted into a four person writers’ cooperative by The California Institute of Arts and Letters; Pessoa Press plans to publish his first book.

One cow, then another, ignites in the March sun, then stands in the long shadows and crops hay. Death does not level all: if you covered the earth with pyramids whose tips all reached the same height, then somehow managed to put you hand on all of them at once, they would not feel even. In space, no one can hear you scream, and if anyone could, all the helium would make your voice sound funny.

 

Short-winged Mold Beetle

Just because your shadow is longer doesn’t mean your stature has grown. I could tell by the way she was dressed that she was very modest and that she was wearing a pink bra. People are one thing, but when the refrigerator changes tone, you need to listen.

————

Mark wants you folks to know that Otoliths will be bringing out a book titled 80 Beetles, which will be a collection of, guess what, these beetle poems.

There’s nothing here I want to buy tonight
–Lois Lane‘s alright, because Superman
is bound to show up, but I was hoping
to do better: Justice League, Green Lantern,
Blackhawk, Metal Men, Sea Devils, Hawkman.
But everyone has beaten me to them.
They’re evil, I think. They’re selfish. They’re out
for themselves and have bought everything up.
Fooey. So I leave for the Woolworth’s down
at the end of the open-air mall. They

sell comics there, like Tarzan of the Apes,
Dr. Solar, Magnus, Robot Fighter,
and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery.
They’ll do in a pinch, and I’m squeezed by greed.
But I find nothing there except Disney
comics and other funny-animal
books and I’m too big for those–I’m almost
ten years old. I could go across the street
and see if they have comic books, but it’s
a four-lane highway, I’m small for my age,
and I’m not sure if I can cross quickly
enough. I’m not the Flash or Superman.
But I want what I want or else I’ll spend
a boring weekend at home. So I go

and I wait until there’s no traffic one
way. Then I cross to the center lane, which
is the turning lane, and wait for the cars
and trucks and buses and motorcycles
to trap themselves behind the traffic light
at the intersection of South Cobb and
Pat Mell drives. Then I cross over and go
into the drug store there and quickly find
–I can sense these things–the magazine racks.
The selection here is even worse, and
there’s the same Lois Lane I left behind
at the Rex-All Drug Store, but I need her
–she’s all I’ve got tonight. There’s no one else
to have. It’s funny how you fall in love
with all that’s left when there are no options.

We’ll eat out again next Friday. By then
there will surely be new comics but I
just can’t wait. I’ll pass the night with Lois
and, tomorrow, re-read some old favorites
and pretend they’re new. I’m in the third grade
but I’m already afraid of dying,
especially if it means that I’ll miss
the second half of a continued story
–I’ve got to be around to buy next month’s
Action and see how Superman escapes
a kryptonite trap. Not that he won’t–good
always wins, at least in comic books and
the Bible, and that’s good enough for me,
even though I’m none too good myself and
probably won’t go to Heaven if death
comes for me anytime soon. But I need
to know how he does it. I hate evil,
especially when it buys my heroes
out from under me. Still, nobody knew

to save the good reads for a little boy
from Marietta. And for all I know
some kid was hoping for this Lois Lane,
the last Lois on the rack. I almost
put her back but think, People are greedy
or mean or rob and murder because they’re
lonely. I’m lonely, too, but fighting it,
and if I can’t have what I want then I’ll
take what I can get and be satisfied.
One day, maybe when I’m old, or at least
mature, I won’t want anything at all
but what I can make myself, but by then

it’ll be too late to be so selfless,
unless I’m Hell-bent on seeing Heaven.
The thing is that I want a good story
and pictures that help to tell it and dreams
about it afterward, as if it was
written for me and I wrote it myself.

————

I’ve had poetry published in many journals, including Ascent, South Carolina Review, Ohio Journal, and Florida Review. I’ve authored two books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), and The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006). My third book, The Story of My Lives, will be published later this year by BrickHouse Press. I’ve taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

On homeward roads the granite houses march,
their roofs pulled low against the lash of rain,
their windows streaming sea-spray, rustic arch
and cobbled path fence-deep in mud again.
They’re drunk. The town is famed for drunken homes,
its pavements wet with whiskey and its gutters
deep in rum. Each tilted building roams
the wine-dark streets some happy hours, then sputters
oaths of sober dryness soon to come.
Then drunken pubs, with brandy-buckled knees,
spin, reel, and stagger on the waving shore,
shout filthy welcomes to the sea, and slump
to sleep in hollows under dripping trees.
All dream of beer. All wake demanding more.

Slurp!

The old chains hang above the stagnant moat,
where ancient creatures gothically float
with graveyard rags and bones caught in their teeth.
Beheaded statues roam the blasted heath.

“No, no!” the wise declare. “The time is past
when people could be made to stand aghast
at tales of howling ghosts and wizard wands,
and awful things that dine on feet and hands!”

The creature enters by the kitchen door
and eats the fools who say it feeds no more.

————

Robert Connal lives in Scandinavia with a beard, a forged Estonian passport, and twenty-three cats. He has often said that he was born in the wrong century. Everyone who knows him agrees that he belongs in any century but theirs.