Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken
Josh works the counter
at Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken
he’s got long, stringy hair
no front teeth, he compliments
my Bowie shirt, says it’s his favorite lp
Dorsey and I take a booth
Josh is wiping down tables
he’s got a bow and arrow
tattoo on his left calf
a primitive line drawing
perhaps a prison tattoo
he asks how the food is
says he’s worked there nine years
he loves his job
his favorite is the two thigh meal
with red beans and rice
and macaroni and cheese
he says sometimes he gets
the biscuits and the apples
if you mix them together
he says, you get a poor man’s apple cobbler
Ballad of Thirty Hours
I jumped in a car
two pm
left Belle Missouri
for Saint Louis
for a reading
then drove to Effingham
Illinois to sleep in a Baymont
pinned to the interstate
the whine of semi’s
rocked me to sleep
I didn’t mind
the desk clerk
blonde and sweet
seemed as kind
as any angel
I woke up in Effingham
ate key lime pie in Greenfield
Indiana, said hello and goodbye
to Ohio, Pittsburgh popped
through the tunnels
at 7pm and I hit a mayday
celebration, read poems
to anarchists, socialists
and other ne’er do wells
the room was electric
the blue grass old tyme band
was great and capitalism
is still bad
then time seemed a nest
of copperheads
I fell into the night
and hoped like hell
home might find me
Truckers Tan and the Midwest Night
I got truckers tan
one half beet red
the sun only shines
on one side of the world
walleyed, almost 500
miles, blue highways
not wanting to get dropped
nowhere
but nowhere all the same
some died about
the time of sundown
town, where there’s
nothing quality
about the inn
exhausted
hundred a night for a bed
in a sea of strip malls
sleeping, second
Mexican restaurant
teenage waitresses
with green hair
there’s a hole in the evening
a hole in the night
a hole in the sky
pretty sure
you can fit
the Midwest inside
Jason Baldinger is a poet hailing from Pittsburgh and recently finished a stint as writer in residence at the Osage Arts Community. He’s the author of several books, the most recent are This Useless Beauty (Alien Buddha Press), The Ugly Side of the Lake (Night Ballet Press) written with John Dorsey and the chaplet Fumbles Revelations (Grackle and Crow) which are available now. The collection Fragments of a Rainy Season (Six Gallery Press) and the split book with James Benger Little Fires Hiding (Spartan Press) are forthcoming. Recent publications include the Low Ghost Anthology Unconditional Surrender, The Dope Fiend Daily, Outlaw Poetry, Uppagus, Lilliput Review, Rusty Truck, Dirtbag Review, In Between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Anti-Heroin Chic, Nerve Cowboy Concrete Meat Press, Zombie Logic Press, Ramingo’s Porch, Rye Whiskey Review, Red Fez, Blue Hour Review and Heartland! Poetry of Love, Solidarity and Resistance. You can hear Jason read poems on recent and forthcoming releases by Theremonster and Sub Pop Recording artist The Gotobeds as well as at jasonbaldinger.bandcamp.com
