Kevin Ridgeway

People's Liquor Store

by Kevin Ridgeway

she sent me to get her cigarettes

one block north and across a busy

main drag to People's Liquor when

I was four years old. I ran away from

home one night in my all-in-onesy

pajamas and leaned against the side

wall of the store alongside the friendly

neighborhood drug dealers, my front lip

nursing a wad of grape-flavored Big League

chew when I asked them if they knew any

good bedtime stories but their stories were

about their grandmothers or old ladies as

they called them and they gave me a

cigarette and lit it for me. I coughed my

lungs out on the long walk home where

I decided to face my fear, be a big boy

and confess to my mother that I broke

her thigh master.

The Destruction of My Seventh-Grade Style

by Kevin Ridgeway

the wind swept away

what I attempted to

keep down with layers of

ninety-eight cent store gel,

leaving me to be scrutinized

by the glares of classmates

at my sunken Dippity Doo

pompadour in second period

biology class

the rain always made sure

my socks became saturated

inside of my sneakers, whose

loud rubber squeaks even

my math teacher yelled at

me for, and rain drops leaked

from my nostrils to saturate

the pre-algebra pop quiz I

was bound to vandalize

with the wrong answers

I came home from school

to change out of my soiled

garb and, as usual, I ignored

my homework to instead study

a coffee table book of Golden

Age Hollywood Stars that I

always gawked at, from Ava

Gardner and Carole Lombard

to Errol Flynn and Cary Grant,

with a special focus to see if any

of their wigs or rugs were

out of place, if their slips were

hanging out, if there was

anything stuck inside of

their mustaches or any other

style mishaps from unruly

conditions that left a

photographic skid mark

on the scrapbooks of their

careers that would give me

some hope as the weather

forecaster on the television

predicted more rain.

Electric Giants

by Kevin Ridgeway

they cast shadows on

the desert highway for

several miles, their

wind generating

propellers slice off

thin layers of dune

sand that rains popcorn

symphonies against

the windshields of

trembling little cars

full of casino losers

cursing when they

realize their camera

erased a great picture

of them at a greasy

spoon pit stop

flanked by two

life-size sculptures

of dinosaurs that

were hundreds of

gas stations behind

them in the friendly

past as they got a

taste of the eerie

future.

Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Southern California. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, he has work included, or forthcoming, in Chiron Review, Reverb, Lummox, Bicycle Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, and The Chaffey Review. His latest chapbooks are On the Burning Shore (2014, Arroyo Seco Press) and 66 Lines on Your Soul (2014, with Catfish McDaris and Subhankar Das, Graffiti Kolkata).