Randy Lowens
Randy Lowens was reared in the north Georgia hills, where he worked as welder, machinist, and repairman. Today he resides in eastern Kentucky, repairs air conditioners, educates his daughter, and writes.
Terry wants to write action novels, but can't
because he's from a small town in Georgia.
Cities are where the action takes place; besides,
action is present in tense. Confederate ghosts
hover over his prose like
buzzards in the afternoon sky.
Instead he writes poems that nobody reads,
recycled at the end of each day.
Terry yearns to be a lady's man, but
can't grow a mustache to save his dear life.
He labors an hour over one line of verse so that
when his sonnet is polished, complete,
Rhonda's done gone on the back of a Harley
in a cloud of red dust with a wink and a wave.
Terry lies naked, ashamed, eyes shut tight,
and imagines them both in the shower.
Terry would like to be a prosperous man, but
commodity futures tanked yesterday.
The wages of labor will scant keep him fed
(and you can't sell a poem that's never been read!)
From a church bazaar cookbook, he learns to bake bread;
when his mother writes, she sends casserole recipes.
Terry longs to make his father proud,
but it's too late for that: the old man is dead.
His lectures, that echo down empty hallways,
belie the inscription on a marble headstone.
Terry prays every night on his knees.
Terry wants to drink bourbon, straight up,
but he can't, so he'll nurse Vodka Collins instead
in a dimly lit corner of Al's Bar and Grill
in the heart of what once was downtown.
© Copyright 2008 Randy Lowens