Damnation and Cotton Candy by Alan S. Kessler (Spotlight)
"The poetry in it is about war, climate, family, childhood, reality, illusion and ghosts — many ghosts; Includes statement poems in free verse and prose that are personal, political, sometimes painful; sometimes a surrealistic convergence of opposites: “…the gray rainbow trails of stone-eyed butterflies.”
Ghost Child
The smell of gasoline.
Maybe someone is filling a generator in their yard
or
a car at the station down the street,
could be a boat.
Gas makes spark-ignited engines run.
That’s its purpose.
But what if it leaks?
How can randomness be the essence of anything?
My
bottle of cream soda and the brine encrusted pickle
scooped from a barrel at what we called the Little Store,
a bite, a swig of pop, I can ride my bike no hands!
There’s
where Wilma Jones used to live, that brown house on Cassidy.
We were in second grade when she moved away three years ago.
Nan left this year, right before Thanksgiving.
We weren’t friends but she was in my class.
Some of the guys were mean, they called her peg-leg
after the doctors cut her leg off to stop the cancer.
It didn’t.
Mack told me she had died.
I remember not knowing what to feel.
I was sad when Wilma moved away but I knew she was alive—
someplace. What was Nan? Nothing?
When you’re thirsty you drink pop,
when hungry a pickle is good but so is blue raspberry taffy.
A heart is supposed to keep beating. That’s why we have one.
I don’t understand.
I never ride my bike past Nan’s old
house.
A slicker flashes yellow
through rain,
the child turns, distant eyes touching mine.
“Nan?”
I have never forgotten her, that’s my emotion,
and like handlebars on a bike ridden with no hands,
maybe there is no purpose. We are, then we’re not,
and the ghosts we conjure never speak.
About the Author:
Alan S. Kessler lives in Vermont with his wife, children, dog, and two cats. He’s authored six novels. Damnation and Cotton Candy is his first book of poetry.
"I grew up in Col
umbus, Ohio. Childhood shapes us. Mine was,
ironically, a gift. The sadism of my mother and the violence of my father, a
murderer who died in prison, created within me a countervailing force, the
ability to write empathetically about characters who, as Faulkner said, not
merely endure but prevail.
Resilience isn't an achievement; it exists as a matter of
luck. I was lucky. I have a wonderful wife and four caring, intelligent
children--even a dog.
I am blessed."
Purchase link - Amazon
On tour with - Poetic Book Tours
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