Yellow Mama E zine

The Big Dig

 

By Damon Hubbs

 

In the shadow of the Tobin

      I read Frank Reardon, the water of the Mystic 

gray and hunched like a gravedigger;

I sit on a bench

     in the shadow of the Tobin

reading Frayed Skeletons

by Frank Reardon. There is smoke over Tehran

and I’m thinking about the blank generation

at the Rathskeller;

it was before my time, like Kennedy

or Carlton Fisk’s game winning homer in the 12th.

      In the shadow of the Tobin

there are flashbacks and time-breaks

… cabbies and codeine, doors and

detours… frayed skeletons

like the ones in the fiction of Frank Reardon. 

       In the shadow of the Tobin

where I crashed my car on a midnight ride,

my teeth like cemetery gates, 

I nearly ate the earth. My pain relief

Increased …

To whom do you pray, 

the dead are disobedient. 

       In the shadow of the Tobin

on a bench

on a date with the synchronized swimmer.

She sang Irish songs and told me

about Jodie Foster’s teenage pop career in France.

I asked her if she’d ever read

Frank Reardon, 

told her my mother died with a wig on.

      In the shadow of the Tobin

I remember a woman

in “the Acre” walking down the street

in a tattered wedding dress, 

how many dawns leaked from her eyes—

and the old queers who lived

downstairs in the apt building on Winter St.,

who beat on the ceiling with a broomstick

every time we’d fight

     fuck, marry, kill.

 

 

 

     Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. Recent publications include Burning House Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Literary Underground, Revolution John, The Gorko Gazette, and others. His latest collection, Bullet Pudding, is forthcoming from Roadside Press. He is a poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Literary Magazine.

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      Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.