Great Kills Review - Volume I, issue ii

Great Kills Review

Winter 2005 – Volume I, issue 2

Justin Case

Flip-Flop Friendly

I don’t know words,

I write things like, “Like a…” or “As if…”

I’m a valley girl poet.

“Flip-Flop Friendly”

A beautiful alliteration on the subway.

Who’s writing these simple bits of connected marquees?

If you asked me for three “Fs” I would say Friendly Fred Flintstone.

I’m a kids’ poet.

I only really modified the state of Fred.

“Flip-Flop Friendly”

Fucking Frustrating Finding Formed…

But what are they selling?

What product wouldn’t benefit from allowing it’s consumers to dress down their feet?

There is no connection between the slogan and the product.

I still couldn’t have written it.

I think the word “beautiful” is an onomatopoeia.

It means something different to everyone.

I’m stuck with it.

I hope it can do the job.

Robert Hass you Bastard

Sifting home after our first poetry reading together, I noticed something about the way her lips met towards the cheek. They were turned downward. Like the work of an overzealous lemonade maker.

I knew we would be naked soon.

Every word she didn’t know, every Image and Statue described an amalgam of the world traveler’s experience.

I was flattered.

But she was really lying under Indian Jones.

FAT BLACK BOLDS

Do I want to be a couple who sits in bed peacefully, blankets up to our elbows reading? Without warning I neatly fold over a page I haven’t finished, close the book slowly so the spine creaks like a pair of old shoes on a hardwood floor. I turn off my lamp and turn away. A pillow arrangement and a pull up of the sheets, as you quietly follow suit.

I’ll have switched to v-neck after you give into a two decade long craving for something matched and satin. Will there be a goodnight in the light, an “I Love You” in the dark?

Do I like sitting without pants, eating soup out of warm Tupperware? Am I content with the blues I can blare, or am I all the places you could be. Not where you say.

Do I like using your cervix as a factory, taking out 18-year leases on friends who will never leave me? All things considered if I die at 58, I’ll never be alone. You could run off with an ivy-league 50-something, but junior will always need lunch money.

Do I want your tearish broken eulogy? Pleading with visitors to “just get” how good of a man I was. do I like the scene where you mention my love of music, theater, food, children? My life reduced, cooked down: add 1 tale of compassion and hubris with 3 parts adjective/noun combinations and you’ve almost “got” the man. Kindness, creative, artist, father all become eternal on lime skinned paper printed in fat black bolds.

About the Author

Justin John Case, 23, is a current resident of Brooklyn, New York. He fancies himself a playwright after graduating SUNY Purchase with a B.F.A in Dramatic Writing. He also works as a freelance theater critic and script and book reader. Upcoming projects include a second comedy show to premiere in New York, and a comic strip. Justin can be reached at Jax2025@aol.com.

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