I wanted to kill the asshole
dressed like a tweaker variation
of Christian Slater’s onscreen
impersonation of Jack Nicholson
behind sunglasses for telling me
not to deny I was playing under
the covers with my dick over
the knockers on the crazy girl
outside in the common area
of the local mental hospital. I
screamed and ran out of the room.
They moved me to a room with an
old man with dementia who burst into
tears as he looked out our window
and couldn’t even remember the last
son of a bitch who pissed him off.
Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press) and nine chapbooks of poetry including Grandma Goes to Rehab (Analog Submission Press, UK) and In His Own Little World (Between Shadows Press). His work can recently be found in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Trailer Park Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.