Featured Modern Poet: Frank Reardon

{ Fried Okra } by Frank Reardon

She often sang "Elvira"
from the little lights trying
to find their way through her
plump belly

Hair net and a face full of
fried okra-
Six sermons from Paul's
luscious letters,
The last of the two dollars...

I married the dreams of her
Waffle House and gave them
to Decatur County,
Either way I was promised
two biscuits and a side of
Jimmy Dean.

I kept believing as the
Juke-Box played "Rose Colored Glasses"
by a silk tongued John Conlee
Turning over the fire of my beauty
and marrying her on a Good Friday,
good lines, good Klonopin...
Jesus and the defeated.

Anger and broken dishes
finding a set of fins in a loose bin
of old caramel wrappers,
Bama face was the detour

The baby is crying
The baby is sitting in shit
while the trailer eats a bowl full
of fists,

I just watched her hair fly
as she threw the last of my
compact discs out the window,

Another beer,
Another kiss,
Another picture frame of hate...
Each day trying to convert the already late,

Black suit rented
A wedding that no one cried at,
Gambling the lines and odds-
when it would end

Forsaken and 5 years drunk...

2-3-10


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FRANK REARDON has published several poetry collections including Cancer Face, Exorcism Of The Con-Artist and Rival Tongues. His work has appeared in such magazines and webzines as New York Quarterly, Quillbillies, Black Listed, Epic Rites, Denver Syntax and Kill Poet. Interstate Chokehold is his first major collection. Frank currently lives in North Dakota and is working on his first novel.

Reviews

“Frank Reardon is a truly exceptional young poet currently rising up from the bowels of the internet. One could compare his work to prominent street poets of past generations, but it would be unfair to lump him in with anyone, for his work has no problem standing on its own merit.”
- John Dorsey

“Frank Reardon works words like a hungry young prize fighter, creating killer combinations that produce knock out verse. A real contender, the kid’s a triple threat with heart, style and class. An up and comer to be reckoned with.”
- S.A. Griffin

“Frank Reardon is a prophet, word brawler and unapologetic caller of society’s bullshit. His words are brutally honest and can take you places you didn’t know existed or weren’t comfortable traveling to alone. One of the best voices of our generation.”
- Richard Daley

“Frank Reardon is a heart beating through impenetrable odds. His writing reaches into your skin, grabs your bones and asks you to dive head first off the cliffs of fear and fragility into the vulnerable sky of our empathetic space and time.”
- Scott Wannberg


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His latest, Interstate Chokehold can be found at http://www.amazon.com/Interstate-Chokehold-Frank-Reardon/dp/0981998445/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265252746&sr=8-1 and is currently waiting for you to tenderly caress it's spine as it gives your brain the BEST night in the sacrament of it's life!

Go on. Don't be scared...

...You know you wanna. Puckishly yours,


-RayRay