Where the Water Runs Uphill Black Guy is black. Bald Guy is bald. As far as Black Guy’s concerned, he’s as Small-Town Middle-America as anyone he knows. He played quarterback and point guard in high school. His favorite sport is baseball. He likes sit-com reruns, beef medium-rare, and ketchup on most things. He’s […]
Oh My Darling Black Guy is black. Bald Guy is bald. Black Guy and Bald Guy are standing in a cavern in a canyon, and they are paralyzed by what they see. Black Guy and Bald Guy are Forty-Niners, or miners, though given the year of their arrival, they might as well be Sixty-Oners. […]
You Be Wing Black Guy is black. Bald Guy is bald. Once upon a time, Black Guy and Bald Guy watched from some scraggly-ass bushes while the first names were given out. You be Dog. You be Cat. You be Dainty Finger. You be Broken Toe. You be Truncheon. You be Ticker Tape. You […]
Given the History of Rope in America Bald Guy is bald. Black Guy is black. Bald Guy likes to hang with Black Guy. They’ve been buddies since childhood. Black Guy likes to hang with Bald Guy except he would never say it that way. Given the history of rope in America, Black Guy doesn’t […]
Charlie Parker Said Hank Williams Had Soul Black Guy is black. Bald Guy is bald. Black Guy’s at Bald Guy’s new house. Bald Guy’s just called it his crib. They’re watching BET because that’s what Bald Guy was watching when Black Guy walked in. What’s wrong with Hank Williams, Black Guy asks and slides the […]
Go the Way of Other Bruises Black Guy is black. Bald Guy is bald. Black Guy’s actually brown, but not like the suits people buy at department stores. He’s blacker than that. Bald Guy and Black Guy used to teach at the same place. Once Bald Guy told his students that black, like God or […]
Forget Route 66. Try 67 instead. Head north out of St. Louis, across the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers into Illinois. There, past Alton and Godfrey, Route 67 splits. Take 267, once upon a time the old 67, and you’re in farming country. What you might not notice as you blow through burgs like Brighton, Medora, […]
An Interview by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. (For the full treatment–sample poems, recordings, reviews, etc.–go directly to PoemoftheWeek.org.) Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: What’s going on with these titles? Almost all of them are titled after magazines. Steve Davenport: I like what Kathleen Kirk has to say in her review at Prick of the Spindle: “As it happened, I was […]
I know this guy. It was thirteen years ago when he first set some words and gunpowder next to metal casings with the intent of being a truth-teller, a dangerous artist, a maker of things that do harm where harm needs doing. If you had asked him back then, he wouldn’t have been able […]
O Whiskey Tub! You used to be easy like Sunday morning on a Saturday night. Sudsy hot water (man wash!), trusty glass, whiskey, ice, evil Sudoku puzzle, pen, music, and our old pal, Painter’s Ladder. Things were pure in those days. Then comes that complicated acquaintance, Book. Yes, complicated. In the beginning, Book is good. […]
