Kevin Ridgeway is from Whittier, CA. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry. His latest book is A Ludicrous Split (alongside poems by Gabriel Ricard, Alien Buddha Press). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Up the River, Nerve Cowboy, The American Journal of Poetry, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Misfit Magazine, The Cape Rock, Plainsongs and So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.
Take a Number
i am officially
declared insane
as i stand on my head
in my underwear
and wait for
the blood
to rush
inside my head
until it’s so
heavy
it bursts
into a
million
different
faceless
statistics
Girls in Windy Skirts
walk down Broadway
passed Elm Street
to the arts district
the breeze
exposing their thighs
under shorter hems
and longer hems
because the ocean
is a relentless pervert.
Alleyway Asshole
he nearly obliterated me
at the Rally’s hamburger stand
after his girlfriend said
I looked just like her
dead ex-boyfriend
especially his pretty eyes
which her latest
common law tweeker
wanted to gouge out
with a knife he used
to chop up dirty
Mexican weed,
but my buddy
Ron jumped in
before he mashed
my face into
oblivion when
he said I was
already spoken
for, and the two
of us became
homies in the
sense that he
always asked
me for spare
change or
cigarettes
and, to avoid
death, I gave
them to the
son of a bitch.
