April 2024
Bio Note: I’m a retired English Professor and live with my wife in Northern New Jersey. My poetry collections A Matter of Timing, Time is Not a River, and Morning Calm as well as a chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon
Author's Note: In honor of Shakespeare’s birth (and death) month, I offer two poems inspired by his work.
Quote of the Month: “Look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire.” – William Shakespeare from Hamlet
Author's Note: In honor of Shakespeare’s birth (and death) month, I offer two poems inspired by his work.
Quote of the Month: “Look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire.” – William Shakespeare from Hamlet
Summertime Blues
On a cherry blossom day
blue jays scold passers-by:
it’s Shakespeare in the park—
the prince’s friend threatens suicide
the cop on the corner
is sawing the air
two friends face off in the parking lot
not with my sister, you don’t.
Originally published in Loch Raven Review
"At the Globe"
Next time send me a text,
he says right away,
everybody’s calling,
wondering if those rumors
about my suicide are real:
I’m still here,
but yeah, Hamlet’s gone,
stabbed in Central Park.
You remember we’d see him
in the Village dressed in black
hanging around Washington Square,
muttering about his dead father
and over-sexed mom.
His shrink kept asking
about his mother and uncle—
what did he feel,
how did she die,
who put the poison in her cup?
Wanted to know about his girlfriend too;
you remember she jumped in front
of the A train late one night—
claimed her father and brother
messed with her after her mother died.
But I gotta get back to NYU—
some professor named Yorick
is giving a workshop:
everybody gets to play
a corpse at least once.
My skull, he said, smells
just like a baseball
he found once down in the Bronx,
right after it connected
with his best friend’s head.
Originally published in Black Coffee Review
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