Kevin Ridgeway (2 poems)
For My Parents
the past died
along with everyone in it
but my mother's hope
lives on in mirror reflections
and my father's relentless disease
confines him to an existential box
while this life becomes
only mine now to master,
in the absence
of a sadistic god.
Under Construction
the power drill breaks through the parking lot asphalt outside my room,
dancing with my pounding temples in a gruesome power trio deluxe sickness
upgraded from my jet lag to an ornery kind of rage that has me in the lobby
ruining all of the other guests' continental breakfast as I demand a refund
and I feel guilty for being such a sodden self-loathing prick
but I'm a work in progress behind closed doors where we dream of showing them all
for trying to get us down with their relentless, capitalistic fervor
and they charge me for additional cleaning fees after I've soiled the linens
with the vengeful smoke that I exhale out of every raw orifice of my damaged body
as I shut the curtains and box the shadow people here in a darkness
that's far too unprepared to drag me off the property and back to the factory
where they can all try to rebuild me.
KEVIN RIDGEWAY lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. He is the author of the poetry collection "Too Young to Know" (Stubborn Mule Press). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Spillway, Up the River, Suisun Valley Review, KYSO Flash, Home Planet News, Cultural Weekly, Big Hammer, Misfit Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry and So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.