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“Gone”
“Irk” was one of my dad’s favorite words.
Mom liked to pick up on teen lingo.
She said “stuff” was “neat.”
She was a real people person.
She was chiffon and dad was concrete.
I walk in the valley where they met.
I walk in a “marijuana haze” (how
Dad put it) in New York City. He was
a quarter leprechaun. She was half elf.
I caused them both a lot of grief.
Had I shown more love, I’d be less bereft.
I walk in ghost shoes, my words
a threnody belonging to the throng.
My folks stay closer now they’re “gone.”
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Jeffrey Cyphers Wright is a publisher, critic, eco-activist, impresario, singer/songwriter, and artist, best known as a New Romantic, post-surrealist poet. He is author of 17 books of verse, including Blue Lyre from Dos Madres Press and Party Everywhere from Xanadu. Recent poetry is in New American Writing, Sensitive Skin, Stat-O-Rec, Posit, and Big City Lit. Wright formerly ran Cover Magazine for 15 years. He is a Contributing Editor to Local Knowledge Magazine and reading series. He has hosted numerous events in New York at La Mama, KGB Lit Bar, and Howl! Happening. Art and literary criticism appear most recently in ArtNexus and American Book Review. [See Jeffrey Wright's brilliant and silly Pandemic Puppet Jam!]
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R. Crumb. Stoned Agin. 1971