December 2014
I'm a Certified Civil Trial Attorney in New Jersey, my day job. I grew up in Brooklyn and, sometimes, it feels like I never left, even though I've lived in New Jersey for almost 30 years. My parents always wondered what I'd do with a major in philosophy and a Master's in Creative Writing. The answer should have been obvious: law school. I also performed as a stand-up comic for two years in the mid-70s. I liked getting laughs but I needed a full-time job. I sold six jokes to Joan Rivers in theearly 90s. She had a PO Box for unsolicited material.
On a Slight Hill
I.
It still has the ring of bullshit to it –
my father’s explanation
of how Uncle William died –
that some old guy
threw a soccer ball
and hit him on the head
just for riding the backs of buses;
he was only fifteen.
II.
Uncle William sits on a slight hill
with my grandmother
by their gravestones,
their knees scrunched up,
her stockings rolled down;
they’re smoking cigarettes,
out for fresh air.
Uncle William is still fifteen,
still waiting to be a man.
Adoption Papers
When our parents
were away, my older
brothers teased me.
They said I was adopted,
that the papers were up
in the kitchen cabinet
with other important papers
we kept beneath the
portable broiler,
which I couldn’t reach
without standing on
the kitchen table--
which I wouldn’t do.
When I asked them to take
the papers down, they said
a judge had ordered
them moved. If I’m ever
recognized for something
important, I’ll deny
I’m related to those morons.
Accomplice
If I asked the social worker
to have the kitchen staff
leave out mayonnaise
in her tuna salad,
they wouldn’t listen.
There were times my mother
played outside the lines
of her heart-smart diet
and had me smuggle in
knishes, pizza and Big Macs,
the food at the nursing home
stank so bad in that
stroke victim warehouse
and Alzheimer’s ghetto.
Being in a minority with
intact minds and sane desires,
she wanted to live a little,
die a lot more.
I could easily get the contraband
through friendly security by telling them
I was going to have lunch with my mother.
Each week I’d show up with the getaway car.
Like Ma Barker and her adoring sons,
I proved an adept accomplice.
Bio
His poetry has never
appeared in the New Yorker,
The Nation, Poetry.
His op-ed pieces
have probably been left
on a back table at
the New York Times,
near an open window,
or worse, the employee kitchen
by an open flame.
Sometimes, at open mics,
he feels he’s reading to an audience
of former English teachers,
the ones who didn’t hold back
in the margins with red ink:
fragment, run-on, don’t abbreviate,
wordiness, choppy, wrong word,
redundant, awkward, needs
organization, usage, lacks focus,
active, not passive.
He writes for the teacher
who once wrote:
interesting idea, develop.
1949
Brooklyn: Izzy and Sonia fight in the car
over my first and middle name.
They’re on the Belt Parkway, heading for the hospital,
she thinks her bag of waters broke from bickering.
They pull off to the side of the road where forsythias
sing all about spring in a wet snowfall.
©2014 Bob Rosenbloom