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Another Kissing Couple Has Exploded
Gary Kissick wittily leads the reader on a quest of exploration; from the tormented bliss of resurrected memories and emotional reflection, through gleeful cultural clashes and cherished events in foreign climes, to the idiosyncrasies of dislocation in Norfolk via slabs of Americana, both archetypal and modern. He draws on rich experiences to create a deeply personal collection of poems steeped in deadly dry humour and evocative emotional connection.
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Gary Kissick
A graduate of both the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop and the University of East Anglia, Gary Kissick has served as Editor of the Hawaii Review and has published poems, essays and stories in Ambit, Antioch Review, Bamboo Ridge, Esquire, Literary Review, Manoa, The Nation, Poetry Now, Prairie Schooner, Rock Salt Plum, Rolling Stone, Spiked, The San Fancisco Chronicle, White Noise and numerous other journals and anthologies.
Honours have included a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His first book of poetry, Outer Islands, was published by the University of Hawaii Press after winning the first Pacific Poetry Competition. His comic novel Winter in Volcano was published by Hutchinson in 1999. He now resides in Norfolk, where he's writing a second novel, Please Set Me Free So I Can Destroy The Earth.
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The Garbage Man
I pity the poor garbage men
collecting garbage in cold rain,
with their only revenge
to bang metal cans
and scatter lids
like best-laid plans.
I lie in bed with my lover,
attentive to curses and loud commands.
Someday, this all will change.
Children will be good
for fear of
The Garbage Man.
Momma will say,
“Go to bed now,
or The Garbage Man
gonna getcha!”
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You Were Lying on the Railroad Tracks
You were lying on the railroad tracks,
apparently drugged or exhausted.
I was riding my faithful horse Spot,
wronged in love and disgusted.
What had been a tornado was now a train,
fixed on you, yet impersonal.
What had been a rumble was now a roar,
increasingly inexorable.
What had been a distance and a sporting chance
had now contracted to happenstance.
I spurred Spot to the spot and leapt
heroically to your rescue,
sweeping you up and off the tracks
before the cowcatcher decked you.
Those are the facts, the rest is history—
marriage, two kids, a divorce—
and the worst has been, at least for me,
the eponymous fate of my horse.
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Just Dawn
I lie awake and study you,
the face that floats upon your sleep
like a blanket of moonlight on snow.
In the wash of your eyes,
the stroke of your nose,
the down upon one burnished cheek,
I seek to decipher your soul.
This is your face without faces—
your circumflexed brow,
your scrunch of delight,
your smile endorsing what pleases.
This is the silent you,
the tidal you, the subtle
rise and fall of you,
the curtain drawn over the dream.
I gaze in admiration.
You open your eyes
and scream.
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The Last Time
The last time I lived alone
was more than twenty years ago
in a termite-riddled house
on stilts in Honolulu.
The stairs were decayed.
The walls gave way
to a touch
like a faithless marriage.
I was never lonely.
I was never afraid.
Here the walls are strong
enough to resist my fists.
And the danger of the stairs is
that no one will ever climb them.
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