Randolph Bridgeman
If you think of poetry as relegated to either Valentine's Day greeting cards or to literature class textbooks understandable only to literature professors, then you haven't read a Bridgeman Poem. His poems are for and about the everyman -- around us and in us, whether we acknowledge that everyman or not.
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Randolph Bridgeman's fifth book
"The Not So Happy Hour Poems" forthcoming in the Fall of 2024
truth or consequences in Wichita
on the weekends my father had
visitation rights he was always looking
for someplace to burn off a hangover
he told me to wait in the car while he
stopped off to have a beer in Baldies Bar
it was 102 degrees in the shade
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i grabbed the eight ball on the steering wheel
and imagine i am driving with
the window down in a white "T" shirt
and jeans cuffed at my cowboy boots
my mother pushed up close
in the seat beside me
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i turn the radio on and pushed
the metal buttons going between
the sad song country stations she'd
drink herself to sleep to
he'd leave me alone out there for hours
now day's he would be arrested
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sometimes we'd just sit in the parking lot
at the Save A Penny Liquor Store
at the corner of Brownsville and 9th
he'd be drinking brownbag beer
and me a Fanta Orange Pop
While we smoked roll your owns
and watched the losers coming and going
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what i remember of my mother is her
spit wet hands slicking down my cowlick
before sending me out the door to my dad
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those hands that folded twilight into
paper airplanes that made those nights fly by
and how when she told me that i was
just like my father it was not
in a good way
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From "The Not So Happy Hour Poems" forthcoming in the Fall of 2024
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this is what happens when you drop
acid while walking the Appalachian Trail
i came across this grave stone
just off the trail in the woods
that read --
“here lies Leon got his ass shot off
in a honkey tonk one night
in July of ‘56
and the wilted flowers
in the mayonnaise jar
was put there by his third wife
Bobbie joe who erected this stone
cos no one else would
not even his first two wives
when she asked them to help
who told her to fuck-off
cos he was some kind of
no account two timing
son-of-a-bitch
that didn’t give a shit about
no one but himself
and they was right
but still she figured he deserved
a proper laying to rest
so she buried him out here
in the middle of nowhere
cos that’s where
his hillbilly ass belongs
and she don’t get up here much
so if you don’t mind pulling
a few weeds off his stone
she’d be much appreciative”
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From "The Not So Happy Hour Poems" forthcoming in the Fall of 2024
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