fiction, poetry, short stories

In memory, Mark Krasnoff, 1963-2006
Poem inspired by the truth, but not based on reality

You preached to me — “Next time FEMA, send lube”
as your tongue spilled out black vile
“Truth,” you said, “Ask
what’s happening now,
not six months ago”

We all saw the water flood the streets
but we never saw the waterline’s brown scar in every neighborhood

We saw houses torn, their innards strewn
across an untended battleground
but never saw the numbers dead
spraypainted on the shutters of our street

We never waited on hold for the insurance
company, our letters returned for months,
only to hear “There’s nothing we can do”

We still believe that if the worst happens,
help will come

You were an explosion of the real
from the tide of humanity
that recedes now like the swampland
that once stood where the levees broke

You were a wild thing
caged in a poisoned city,
bursting forth in your ambition with something
no other actor dared wield — the truth

From that unsturdy and muddy place
you saw too far

And so, one hot September night,
the brutal summer not yet a memory,
you headed to the banks of that eternal river,
wielding a bottle of bourbon and valium,
to lay back on the wet grass for one last look
at the dim stars

before sinking back
to the place of cottonmouths
and catfish
where you emerged.

By Frederick Greenhalgh

Poem Read Aloud by Author

I’m not religious, but
every morning, as I get off work
I buy Dixie’s first black coffee
and walk home with a disposable cup.

The city snores, coughs, and murmurs.
Darkness clings to concrete eaves.
I trip over a man, thinking he’s a garbage bag.

I’m not religious, but
5AM is an odd hour. You feel safe—the criminals are sleeping.
I cut through perilous streets where roses grow
around barbed wire.

Stopping by a church at the meeting
of two roads,
Piety and Desire,
I light a damp cigarette.
There’s caution tape around the Virgin
and grass crawling from cracks in the asphalt.

I’m not religious, but
there are twelve more dead today.
I can read the front page through a window gouged with the word ‘CUNT.’
I save my fifty-cents for the laundromat.

One time, while my socks were drying,
a man busted in looking to rob the joint.
I lowered my book to see the clerk
reverently emptying the register
as if waiting his whole life for this moment.

Though I’m not religious,
I still wonder, when I see two pigeons fight
for an empty potato chip bag, or drink
from a film of diesel fuel—

But that’s no way to go to bed; easier to crush
the Styrofoam cup as you climb each stair to the seventh
story, lighting your last cigarette on a balcony,
wishing you could see the sunrise.

Unlike you neutered mutts I stalk the night in scandal. I prowl, feed, fuck. I sleep in hovels– vanish in alleyways.

I don’t know Kibbles ‘N Bits or kitty litter. I shit where I please and eat dock rats.

I sit on rugged haunches: My right paw grew back crooked after that screeching screaming battle you could hear down Chartres St. My mane is a sutured mortar-wound hardened by weekend foulness.

I cannot clean myself by licking.

I don’t know my progeny but swear I hear their calls, long into naked night in this city of gutters alleys, filth–I feel their fighting, their anxious brawls and tenacious jaws, the children of raped wild cats breathe that dangerous word: feral.

So purr now, pretty, eat well and sleep long. I’ve never sat on any man’s lap.