Kevin Ridgeway

The 1994 Northridge Earthquake

Mom woke me up,
her screams
in brutal harmony
with the roar
of the earth—
I was asleep
on the floor,
which seemed to be
surfing the waves
of a Pacific
we thought
our California
had fallen into,
but the ground
stopped trembling
like my hands do
every single morning
when it’s a clear line
to my life being
mostly all my fault,
every last fear of it
stirs me awake
on solemn days
when I remember
everyone who’s
left me alone
here inside
the disaster
they are now
free from,
and how
I’m glad they
remembered
to teach me
how to swim.

One For the Road

We escaped
on her boyfriend’s EZ Pass dime
north through Massachusetts
deep inside the blue state oasis
of a red state country, and we
stopped in Lowell to take a seat
where Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg
once rested their royal beat asses in the grass
of Edson Cemetery–Jack Kerouac’s bones
didn’t have to say a word to me,
stabbed in the heart by dozens of pens
left behind by other writers, other admirers
on the road in search of the same freedom
which alluded him in the end,
a freedom that alludes the show bears
at Clark’s Trading Post on the border
of New Hampshire and Vermont,
our final tourist stop on a July afternoon
where I sat inside an arena with children
whose laughing enthusiasm saved my life
as America turns on people it’s tired
of offering its freedom to, people like me
who bite its hand, watch the blood pour
off its flesh and onto my blank pages
forming secret maps of the universe
so that I know my way around eternity
and don’t bump into its cosmic furniture
in a place where roads are no longer paved
and our names have burned into stardust. 

Grandma’s  False Teeth

Only a few of us knew that she even wore them. 
She lost her natural smile when she was just 21. 
On very rare occasions,  I’d find her dentures
soaking in their pastel-colored case, and when
I did, I’d tell her hey, I found a smile!  for
the times she pestered me, asking me where
mine was whenever family photos were taken,
or whenever  people took us out to eat, or
whenever I made any kind of a polite request. 
Now I know what it’s like to replace my smile—
however, I have advanced science and leftover
inheritance money to hide my problem
with state-of-the-art cosmetics.  I wish I could
have just fucking smiled for her once, but
I was too cool to show gratitude and humility,
two qualities that made my grandmother cooler
than Miles Davis and John Coltrane combined. 

 

Kevin Ridgeway’s latest books include Death of the Coppertone Girl (Luchador Press) and We Have Waited Long Enough (with James H Duncan and Gabriel Ricard, Alpine Ghost Press).  His work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Talking River Review and Trailer Park Quarterly, among others.  He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.