I grew up outside the small town of Nassau in upstate New York from about age 8 to 15. We lived in a trailer park, and this collection is not about the park itself (that’s another book of mine called We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine) but of memories of Nassau and the surrounding area. The book is filled with poems inspired by people and places there, perhaps not as autobiographical as my other books, but the voices and lives within the poems exist within the memories I have of the area. The book contains 30 photographs and 30 poems and is also inspired by the Bruce Springsteen album Nebraska. Poems featured include “Johnny ‘89,” “Cedar City,” “Townie Cops,” “Hand-Me-Downs,” “My Mother’s House,” “Used Cars,” “Blood of Nostalgia,” and many more!
The book is now available! Here’s a sample piece from the book. Thanks for taking a look. Your support and interest means so much to me!
Used Cars
A ‘91 Pontiac with rust stains on the roof. We took it up and down the streets in town, passed the ball fields and the gun shop and took a right at the Sunoco station back to the edge of the village. On the first turn I could tell the CV joints were going out but all she did was stare out the passenger window and tell me how she didn’t like this town. She had to get out. It was going to trap her like it did her sister. The faint smell of smoke came from the air vent. I wasn’t sure if it was residual ghosts of old cigarettes or maybe the engine. The gauge said the temp was fine but that didn’t mean anything. She put her feet on the dash. Bare and pale in the early summer sun. I thought of footprints, but who cares? I wasn’t buying this old Pontiac anyway. Not from Jeff at the Fix-n’-Go outside of town. Not after he made that racist joke about what PONTIAC (as an acronym) stands for. I’d heard it a million times. I mean, on one hand, who cares. But I’d heard too many guys I went to school with (who reminded me of Jeff at the Fix-n’-Go) who belittled my best friend, a half-Mexican, as a “spic” or “wetback” and I made the decision at age nine not to fully trust anyone who said such dumb shit. Another turn. Another cul-de-sac. The wind played with her hair. Caramel whippets dancing around the headrest. She sometimes joked about robbing a bank and she smelled like a department store perfume counter, and I like both of those things. She sighed, looked at me. I winked. Maybe it was too late for us to get out. I pulled into the Fix-n’-Go garage beside the line of used cars and told Jeff I’d like to try the ‘88 LeSabre too. He said he had to find the key. I said that was fine, I didn’t have anywhere to be. I’ll bet when he came back out to find us gone, he was pissed. But to hell with Jeff Sawyer. We headed to Smith Pond. Watching the way her feet bobbed above the water and caught the light of the sun as she tried to float with the abandoned summer camp on the hill was worth another week of hunting used cars, just something to get us from Point A to anywhere but here.
