Kevin Ridgeway

FACTORY GOD
_{for Fred Voss}

There’s nothing cooler
than a poet
who ditched a PhD in English
for a life of hard work in the factory,
a poet who dressed like Magnum PI,
worshipped Bukowski
and jammed to The Doors,
a poet whose poems taught me more
about labor than I’ve learned
in any history class, poems laid out
like intricate engine parts set to power
the inner machinations of humanity.
He was an eloquent, soft-spoken badass
who did poetry readings behind sunglasses.
The true poet laureate
of the common people.
I’ll remember him and Joan
as the kind of hip elders
a man can only dream of,
they spurred on the narratives
of my Southern California homeland
from which mine emerged,
strange flowers plucked
by the hands of gentle giants.

MY NEPHEW SENT ME A BLUEBIRD

small and made of glass,
it sits in front of a can of spinach
out of which Popeye and Olive Oil figurines
emerge triumphantly with their arms spread
a gift from a go go dancer turned writer
who impressed Bukowski with her poems
years ago when the world
was still full of distinct character
and plenty of dirty old men
to both charm and frighten children
like my nephew and his stubborn hope
with a fire in his eye that tells me
the kid just fucking gets it.

WHERE MARILYN RESTS
UNDERNEATH THE STARS

Her crypt is outside
at a cemetery in Westwood
where she can get some sun,
not far from Rodeo Drive
where diamonds are still girls’ best friends,
in a tomb purchased by Joe DiMaggio
a man still in love with her just like
the horny students around the corner
at the University of California at Los Angeles,
where some left their studies
because literature and the tragedies
of movie stars like Marilyn taught them
that happy endings happened only
in movies or to Hugh Hefner,
who purchased the crypt next to her
but he was a man of pictures
and few good words,
and neither was Rod McKuen,
the only dead poet who could afford
to buy a grave a few feet away.

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press), Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press) and The Ghost of Cal Worthington (Beach Chair Press). Recent work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, and Gargoyle Magazine, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.