Gary Walton
(USA)
Wasting my time
I’m not sure if I’ve been wasting my time
But time has sure laid waste to me;
I suspect that my home has poor feng shui
By the way I feel absurd most of the day,
Yet the living room is not full of stop signs
Or tiger pits, nor is the foyer festooned with
Dear John letters or suicide notes;
Perhaps I feel dismayed by the frequency
I see my father’s face in the bathroom mirror
While shaving—how his moustache has turned white
While his hair has thinned to that of a dandelion
Just before an evening’s breath makes it
Disappear altogether—then again, I think
I am grumpy because the mosquitoes don’t care
If I am lonely or fear oblivion like all the billions
Who have come before me and were forced to
Leave like so many uninvited guests at a wedding—
The bugs bite anyway, with abandon, and I wonder
Are their hypodermic proboscises infected? Bird flu?
Swine flu? Donkey flu? Will I swoon with West Nile
Fever? Is that rash on my shoulder something worse
Or nothing at all? Will I succumb to acid reflux?
But nothing is what this moment is not—and that is
Something—like the pleasure of a plum at perfect
Ripeness or a lover under the covers when the room is black
And both of you have to see with only lips and fingers—
That too is not nothing and worth a moment to mull
Over in the mind—before slipping backward toward
Worry, or worse, ennui….
The Filthy Snow
Today, the snow is falling
Heavily, like asbestos from
A demolition site—think of the ones
In Detroit whose bones are picked
Apart and shipped over seas
While the workers stand idly by,
Weeping; huge piles smother the
Brown winter grass, hide the red
Rust on the used Japanese cars
Abandoned along the city street.
School has been cancelled; the
Roads impassable; our town is stuck
In sudden climactic dysfunction.
Thus, I am home stymied in my
Own forward movement, observing
The world from behind my blinds,
Remembering a similar storm
Long ago when I was away from
Home, on the road, a musician,
Traveling with a famous doo-wop band
Whose legacy of hit recordings and film
Kept them working long after their
Moment had passed—still, show
Business, like each newly falling
Flake, held a certain delight in its
Sheer novelty, bright and slick and
Cool, each footfall making an imprint
And progress could be measured
Through the receding tumbled drifts
And sudden ruffling gusts of fortune—
In Montreal during a blizzard,
My French was as bad as the weather;
Mon Dieu! Quel imbécile j’étais ignorate;
In that very European, North American city
Men and Women wore matching full-length
Furs and hats of mink, drank Cognac in snifters;
Some bathed in a heated pool, uncovered,
Observing the stars on the hotel roof,
Steam rising like pure souls to heaven
But their bodies luxuriated in the soft
Intoxication of the mist—what was weather
To a people so full of joie de vivre?
Life was grand and unsullied
Like la nouvelle neige that
Now engulfs my garden Hotei Buddah;
But I cannot keep that pristine vision—
Soon, I find my mind slipping like a
Foolish pedestrian on an icy sidewalk
Into an imprecise allusion to Jimmy
Joyce’s “Dead” and I too feel the clutch
Of vague dread as the flakes fall through
The universe covering every leaf and
Branch and blade and grain of asphalt
As they descend like the last end of us all;
And even now, as I watch, the virgin
Ice is already collecting bits of black
Ash and motes of other dark confetti
Confirming that, without warning, like
A sudden Nor’easter, we too will be
Quieted under the weight of the
Filthy, filthy, snow.
Doing the chores: Sex and Laundry
It is Tuesday, a week day, a
Weak day, cloudy and not the
Sabbath, a work day and alas
Laundry day and she feels as if
She has just washed the clothes,
Yesterday,
But that bit of impedimenta was
Last Monday already and the days
Whiz by like amusement park diverssement,
Blurring images and faces as in a
House of mirrors made of foil or
Like the skyline from atop a tilt-
o-whirl and she wonders what the
World will be like at the end of
The ride when the gears grind
To a full stop—and she imagines
An old hag on a gurney covered
In a dull green cotton gown, a
Pale preview of her own final cerements
And she thinks “I will be that she,
Looking over the edge at what there
Is to see and wondering if Freud
Was right, if it all, all of ‘it,’ was about
sex—though sometimes
It was hidden in brute disguises,
Sometimes in subtle sentimental
Costumes to veil the true pedestrian
Character of the ultimate affair—.”
How daunting to realize all of the
Music, dancing, high-minded rhetoric
Much less the dinners, the intrigues,
The subterfuges were merely to get the
Next generation born—are we, then, just so many
Rutting fools, clowns to nature, harlequins
Stumbling along a prescribed quotidian sojourn?
Such paltry musing is scant comfort
When she must dip her hands in
The frothy water, to once again squeeze
Out the dirt, to refresh the act for
One more performance. Then, for an
Instant, she wishes she could dive in the tub
And drown her past, wash her worries
Like the Kajol from her eyes, wipe her mind
Clean like lipstick from his shirt collar
And rise again as if baptized into a world
Made anew: bleached white and wrinkle free.
Cut to: Slow Dissolve
My house is filthy;
The furniture covered
In a fine gray mist of….
I read once
That house dust is
Largely flakes of human
Skin sloughed off like
Tiny bits of snake hide;
If so, my yesterdays are
Piling around me in a
Disturbingly thick detritus—
Perhaps, that is why I
Am reluctant to clean;
I can’t bear to give up my past
Which has of late become so much
Greater than any possible mortal future;
My rooms wear me like a memory
And it’s humbling to think that all
My fuss and pain, in the end, will
Be disposed of as efficiently as
A good suck from a long handled
Hoover.
Complaining to Death
“By the way—you look fantastic in your boots of Chinese plastic.”
— Chrissy Hynde
Melissa Moon sat down for the interview
In a small café located in an indifferent
Part of town—already Christmas displays
Had invaded the shelves of stores though
It was still late October—“Should one say
Merry Christmas…”Ms. Moon opined while
Lighting up a black and brown twisted cheroot
To the frowns of slack-faced on-lookers, “when
One hasn’t even begun to Trick-or-treat? My
God, Thanksgiving! Think of that!” she said,
As she forced blue-gray smoke through her
Pursed lips making an ephemeral filigree in
The still air—then after ordering a soup and
Campari with ice, the author looked around
At the tables and then the street with dismay.
“I think complaining has become
My métier,” she said, without blinking, “a
Way of being in the world—not much we can
Do to change anything, though—and even if
We could change the government or even
People’s minds there is still death to contend
With—and…” she said sighing, “worse
Decrepitude—that slow painful waiting and
Wasting away into superfluity and oblivion….”
Here she stopped and strummed her fingers
On the Formica table top as if pausing for
A distant tune to return to her memory—
“…and now look,” she said, pointing with
The burning tip of her tiny cigar, “my soup
Is cold and my ice has melted—it’s maddening
To be constantly victimized by this incessant
Entropy—when, Mon Cher, is enough, finally, Enough!”
“Merry Christmas,” she said to one
Of the carved pumpkins sitting in the window,
As she stood up and walked briskly to the
Sidewalk, leaving her companion completely
Nonplussed watching the heels of her boots strike
The concrete with a delicate feminine defiance
That sent tiny sparks into the growing dusk,
Barely illuminating that delicate moment
Before the streetlights blink on and
The city’s mood shifts from taupe to mauve.
____________________________________________
Gary Walton was born in Covington, Kentucky and grew up in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. He received his B.A. from Northern Kentucky University in 1981. He studied writing and publishing at the University of South Dakota then moved to Washington D.C. receiving a Master of Philosophy degree in American Literature in 1985 from the George Washington University and a Ph.D. in International Modernism in 1991. His areas of special interest are Twentieth-Century American Literature, the Irish Literary Renaissance and International Modernism. His dissertation was a poststructuralist comparative study of James Joyce’s Ulysses and the fiction of Donald Barthelme.
He has published stories, poems, non-fiction and letters widely, including in such diverse publications as The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, Black Mountain II Review, The Wooster Review, Black Buzzard Review, Slipstream, Pacific Coast Journal, Paper Bag, The Kentucky Philological Review, Journal of Kentucky Studies, California State Poetry Quarterly, The Cincinnati Poetry Review, The GW Review, Flights Magazine, Incliner, Dream Weaver, Chaffin Review, Inscape, et. al. His work has been reviewed in The Cincinnati Post, The Kentucky Post, The Small Press Review, The Kentucky Philological Review, Everybody’s News, Pacific Coast Journal, et. al.
His first chapbook of poetry is called The Sweetest Song (Peapod Press, 1988). His second, called Cobwebs and Chimeras was published by Red Dancefloor Press in the spring of 1995. It was chosen as a “March Pick” by The Small Press Review in 1997. The Newk Phillips Papers, his first book of collected short fiction, was published in the winter of 1995. In 1994 and 1995, Walton was nominated for the Pushcart prize. Effervescent Softsell his third book of poetry was published by Red Dancefloor Press in 1997. The Millennium Reel, his fourth book of poetry was published by Finishing Line Press in 2003. In 2008, Full Moon: The Melissa Moon Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2007) was nominated for a Kentucky Literary Award. His novel about Newport, Kentucky in its heyday as a gambling Mecca: Prince of Sin City was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009. His new book of poetry Eschatology Escadrille: Elegies and Other Memorabilia was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. In 2010, he was voted Third Place: “Best Local Author” Best of Cincinnati 2010 issue in City Beat magazine.
Walton has taught writing and literature at The George Washington University, The University of South Dakota, The University of Cincinnati, and Northern Kentucky University. He has also worked as an editor for the United States Coast Guard and several literary journals including Clifton Magazine, The Vermillion Literary Project and The Kentucky Philological Review. He is Editor of The Journal of Kentucky Studies.
He has written and produced radio plays for the Radio Repertory Company of Cincinnati. Currently, he is an assistant professor at NKU where he continues to write poetry, fiction, plays, and essays as well as teach writing and literature.
For more information and a representative sample of reviews visit Dr. Walton’s website at
or e-mail him at
waltong@nku.edu.