Larry, Moe and Me

Panhandlers in Ocean City
awaiting Draft physicals on Ninth Street -
never really owing what we didn�t have -
and what else is there?
Attic rooms on Third St., cold shower stall in the yard,
2x4�s of worn white paint and body odor.
We stole cigarettes from DingBells
and wine money from pocketbooks.

Moe surfed the big board,
never tilted pinball and cheated at cards.
Tuesdays Larry fucked the landlady.
She lived on the first floor and had a TV.
We watched Sirhan and Westmoreland
while her tits bounced.
She had a freckled throat and feverish flush �
her sofa smelled of coconut and cum.

Mondays and Wednesdays
I�d meet Muriel after her shift
at Phillips Crab House.
She was slightly plump with under-aged baby fat,
peachy locomotive skin and
long straight blond hair full of August sun.
She loved dry-humping
and smelled like pie crust and Old Bay.

Thursdays the Steakhouse had all you could eat.
Weekends were parties in the dunes.
We were barefoot and free
like wind-tossed kites above the beach,
indifferent, invincible but fragile if touched,
denying such wreckage falling to the sand,
the summer was ours
and there really was nothing else.

Previously published in Triplopia

Party Line

The huge brown poles stuck every half block
connected everything with tattered wires
veeing down the row-house alleys
to Lincoln logs on the horizon �
well Mannasota Ave. anyway �

and then across the Atlantic.
They say the President
will be able to talk
to the Kremlin.

And now we�re squatting under our desks,
facing away from the windows,
heads between our knees in
Mrs. Sinton�s third grade -
Air Raid drill they called it.

I�d killed enough Germans and Japs with
Vic Morrow-like machine-gun-cool
in fox holes under those poles
that they shouldn�t be a threat, -
this enemy was politically different.

Checking out the upskirt on that cold hardwood floor
I whispered to Linda Perry with her buck teeth
and albino blonde hair that this was nothing
to worry about now that we could talk
to the Russians on the phone and all -

and then as an afterthought informed her that
I would be majoring in political science
in college, thinking it must be
pretty big shit.

Previously published in Triplopia

Elegy Eve

Torment doesn�t wait for tomorrow,
he shows up tonight on Rofie�s porch
looking like Stevie Becker,
wearing Robert�s overcoat
and smelling like Jim Beam and Old Spice,
demanding something other than lunchmeat
for the wake and reminding me of Phillip Krause
and Kenyon Avenue.

He brushes past my elbow
and invites himself in.
The wind that follows him blows
my scribble to the floor
and my now withered arm
he belittles as skinny and weak,
asks me how it feels.

Stevie Becker was bow-legged,
they said it was rickets,
and he wore knee braces.
It didn�t seem a big deal being short
until they operated, broke, reset,
months of therapy, we were twelve.
It was a big deal,
he wanted to be taller.

Philip Krause was quiet, fat,
obnoxious, had terrible breath.
I hit him behind the left ear
with a toy hammer.
His head was bleeding.
I knew my life could never be the same
so I hid in the airy-ways
between the row-houses
on Kenyon Avenue.

Rofie, Robert and his parents,
they find me like Frankenstein.
He had to have stitches.
I get a beating with a horse whip
and get grounded.
I never saw him after that in the alley,
anywhere.

Torment pours a drink,
offers me the bottle explaining
I should sharpen my pencil
and come off the wagon,
he�s found the whip
so cleverly hidden all these years,
it�s a long cold night
and we�re just getting started.

Dreamboat

going the wrong way
on the Baltimore beltway,
choking on carb-flooded gas,
over-heating over
first date curfews
as we left the �drive-in�
already an hour late.

a death trap �60 Falcon
[appropriately black and white]
was not only my first car
but the first on
the drug store corner,
made him a celebrity,
and yes definitely a �He�-
lost half the time
on the make the other.

anyway He�s straining
brittle-bone balljoints
and bald tires, while I�m
keeping right white buck
and pedal to the floor,
straining to spot that landmark�
that yes-we-know-where-we-are
building or corner.

all the time switching channels,
constantly on alert
for the right hot tune
or �Wild Thing�
or anything by the Stones
which was always right.

your father home
cursing hippies to your mom
would have been loading his gun
and waiting in the driveway
if he had seen the feature
from our back seat
and the coming attractions
in your hair.

Previously published in Thunder Virus and Dream Sandwich

   

                                                                                                � Craig Kirchner

Loch Raven Review Spring 2006 — Vol. 2, No. 1
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