Kevin Ridgeway

What’s In A Name?

Perhaps my missing teeth
give me a speech impediment,
but people assure me
that’s it’s not an issue,
and they can hear me clearly,
which leaves me wondering
why the cashier at Wendy’s
who took my overpriced
double cheeseburger order
got my name so horribly wrong.
I study it there on my receipt
as it laughs, blemished
in awkward embarrassment
for not spelling out “Kevin”
but “Cabin” instead.  This
happens to lots of people,
as I’ve seen from time to time,
but what kind of a name is Cabin?
I can understand maybe Corbin,
as in the actor Corbin Bernsen 
(is he dead?  ok, maybe I digress)
Friends suggest Cabin might
make a good nickname for me,
or better yet a fictional persona
ala Hank Chinaski or Kilgore Trout.
Cabin Weaver— a poor lost soul
who could barely afford
the lamp warmed beef sandwich
he chews on while high schoolers
laugh amongst themselves,
making old Cabin believe
they’re all in on the joke,
birth given to a new pariah
for strange and twisted times,
regardless of what you call him. 

 

American Mulray

my roommate and I woke up
talking about Jake Gittes
at the end of the movie Chinatown,
and the spaced-out look of disbelief
in his eyes as he watched
Noah Cross tie up all the loose ends
that helped him get away with murder
and they told Jake to just go home,
maybe to splash his face
with the tainted water
they’d all been drinking

 

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press, 2022), in addition to over a dozen chapbooks and split books.  His work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Heavy Feather Review, San Pedro River Review and Trailer Park Quarterly, among others.  A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, he lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.