Dave Newman

Beautiful American Songs

He said “You really must read Neruda in Spanish.”
If I learned every language of every poet I loved
I’d never have the time to read any poetry, and the
hole in my head would be the size of the midday sun.
Neruda sings to me the way Neruda sings to me.
I like it, and it doesn’t take a doctorate to know that.
He said “English just doesn’t capture the music.”
Okay. I understand that we’re a country of racecar
drivers, football fans, crooked politicians, and rock
n’ roll reporters, but tell me that you don’t love the
sound of your own voice. Tell me that the word
poontang isn’t, in its beautiful American way, a song?

 

Eric Miles Williamson

who is a pretty great novelist
and a pretty vicious literary critic

who grew up in a trailer
on the parking lot

of an auto shop
where his dad worked

when he wasn’t in prison.
Eric Miles Williamson

who sometimes lived with his mom
who basically fucked bikers for drugs

and would have preferred
that her son go away or die.

Eric Miles Williamson
once said about academics

who preached the virtues
of class-based literature

“For people who love books
about working-class people

they sure don’t like it
when one of us is around.”

He got one of my books published.
I bought him a bottle of whiskey

on an almost full credit card.

 

I Used To Always See Bouncers

sitting on their stools, reading Bukowski
between checking IDs and knocking heads.

Now they’re on their phones.

 

Dave Newman is the author of nine books, including How to Live Like Li Po in Pittsburgh: essays from a writing life (J.New Books, 2024) and the story collection She Throws Herself Forward to Stop the Fall (Roadside Press, 2024). He lives in Trafford, PA, and teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg.