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Pulp Fiction
–After the letters of Louis McKee, poet, publisher, friend
by Ellaraine Lockie

Not here, not in this vat of macerated
agapanthus and banana tree fiber
after it's simmered and strained to pure cellulose
All the unessential gone, like in one of his poems
As true to the gospel of itself
as the man who would have held its paper sheets
Whose letter-pressed words were to have floated
the surface to be absorbed over and over by readers

Each paper prized for its nonconformity
rough texture, ragged edges
As real as the alliteration that binds
beer, basketball, Bohemian
As honest as the flaws in a failing heart
and the self-labels of sad
Of deviant, cynic, self-destructor
Of burping, farting and fucking

Other truths in language so small
that one might miss them on first read
Of a Hoagie on Thanksgiving
A kiss on a dead father's cheek
Gifts to others when the fact of no heat or water
screamed louder than the winter blizzards
The unadulterated affinity for anything Irish
For women and the written word

Teacher who pulled poems out of the pulp of students
Out of us to preserve them in permanent ink
The truth in all of it, how he lives-on
Archival in the wake of time



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Nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize by The Broadsider.  

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