The Nowhere Kid by Frank Reardon On those darkest and loneliest of nights when the dog would rather growl at the shadows than look for a bitch, i remember how you treated me for smoking pot and reading Dylan Thomas in the school parking lot, you told me that i was living up to my family name and that soon after i was headed for a life of community college, 5 kids, minimum wage, the military, or prison, i can still feel how cold the chair was that you forced me into, the steel bolts lodged like bullets into my legs and your hand, the one that gripped my neck, pushed my face into an open science book, and as i fought against you with my shoulders you laughed like a jailer in control of the electric chair, those minutes passed in the disguise of hours as you gazed at me from your desk, and your face curled up like a pig standing in front of his mud bath when you forced me to read about your protons and electrons, i was the dying mouse to your screaming hawk when you found out that i had slipped a book of poems in between the pages of the school book, another no good Reardon livin' up to his name, you said while throwing Arthur Rimbaud into the garbage, why can't you be like the other kids, you said, they're at parties, driving around town, going out on dates, getting ready for graduation, they're going to college, what are you going to do...read poetry forever?
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Santa Fe Literary Review