Poem for the People
Who Have Nowhere to Go
I always like to jam
with salt of the earth
people, the forgotten
ones who don’t have
even a kiddie table
to sit at, people like me
now back here in
the cold turkey shakes
of my withdrawal from
my false sense of family,
people I miss who pray
for me and the day
I will be well enough
to board a bus or a train
or an airplane again
among other discount
souls homesick for
a place none of them
will ever go again.
The Balance on My Gift Card
to Black Bear Diner
I arrived shortly after dark
in a suburb of Denver
my best friend used to live in
but he moved three hours south
by the time I arrived there
before I learned to pay attention
to updated details about my friends,
some of whom don’t even want
to talk to me after my latest
blunder here in love, when I broke
my new girlfriend’s bong up against
her wall and made a suicidal run
for the edge of town and a squad
of cops at my new hotel room
who delivered the court summons
for broken property and could see
how sorry I was for the whole
shameful ordeal, and they felt
sorry enough for me to give me
a free gift card to Black Bear Diner,
which they said was three blocks
west of my hotel. After they rolled out,
I starting walking to Black Bear Diner
after spending most cash I’d of used
to eat on weed. I got to the spot
and they could not determine what
my balance was on the card while
my stomach started to growl.
I called Black Bear Diner
Gift Card Services, who took me
through a long list of security
questions that included taking
a photo of the gift card with my
cell phone, and that’s when
the automated operator told me
the balance on the card was zero.
Poem in Which
My Dead Girlfriend
Gives Me Shit
I answered her silent questions to me
as I stormed up Pacific Avenue to
the post office, sending off late books
and other unfinished business she began
to haunt me over after my latest
short-lived romance fizzled. She said
I broke one cardinal rule she used to
have for me: “Don’t fuck up.”
I stood there washing my clothes
at the laundromat in a depressive effort
to love myself because she couldn’t
anymore, and neither can all the people
who are still alive if I push them away
by behaving like a recovering primadonna
who had relapsed, a spotlight bathed on
the crown of shit I made and wore
upon my crazy head for all the confused,
angry and brokenhearted people to see.
Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press) and nine chapbooks of poetry including Grandma Goes to Rehab (Analog Submission Press, UK). His work can recently be found in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Trailer Park Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.
