Kevin Varrone
BIRTHPLACE OF A NATION
Joe saw your number at Silk City
while going crazy in the men’s room.
Joe saw your number
on the sin wall
and understood the irritating itch
on his bearish toes to be his own cross,
his own three alarm fire.
Joe TIVO-ed Casablanca
and became immune to commas.
Joe’s been paralyzed by the syntax of youth,
by his sumo for frankfurters.
Joe is a concave bibliographer, a nor’easter
cult diva who uses tabula rasa
as an ultimatum and asks
“Where you at?”
Joe loves women. Joe loves a woman
the way two broken machines
love each other in a landfill.
Kevin Varrone’s most recent publication is Eephus (Little Red Leaves Textile Series, 2012). His current project, box score: an autobiography, is forthcoming as a set of literary baseball cards from Little Red Leaves Textile Series (2013) and as an iPhone/iPad app (2013). His previous publications include Passyunk Lost (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), id est (Instance Press, 2007), and the chapbooks g-point Almanac: 6.21-9.21 (ixnay press, 2000) and the philadelphia improvements (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). He lives outside Philadelphia.
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #1.
