Old Chinese Poets
(for greg brown & bill morrissey)
By Michael Shannon Friedman


Somebody said you look like a lumber

jack who reads

Confucius. Maybe so but I bet it’s Beckett gets

you through those nights when memories

burn like bootleg

whiskey in your homemade

jam jar throat, when the wind moans like Chester

Burnett, light giving birth

to darkness and you laugh and watch Krapp pull

the rug out from under

love: "the world might be uninhinted":

might? You say smiling, your fingers making steel

strings sound as soft as a grand-

father feathering a photo from long

ago: a sun dark as a clown’s

eyes sets by the side

of a road: Traverse City, Duluth, Portales,

Barstow: somebody else saw

you at the old Saw

Mill, your voice a dust

coated honey, cutting rocks

with a Jelly Roll «

Michael Shannon Friedman, author, poet, musician, and journalist, is this little wreck's fourth official contributor.