Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His latest poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner and has just been published.A collection of flash fiction, Presto!, will be published in 2023 by Bamboo Dart Press. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also just been published by BlazeVOX Books.

Theft-Proof Cars

When Cosa and me boosted the car,
sitting in the driveway with the doors unlocked 
at three in the morning,
we didn’t realize it was a manual transmission.
Neither of us can drive a stick.

The Moviegoer

Ever since the pandemic, I’ve noticed,
you not only buy a ticket for a film,
you also choose the seat,
often with the option 
to buy a sandwich or slice of pizza on the side.

Growing up in Potawatomi Rapids in the Sixties,
we had just one theater, the Bijou,
an art deco palace that dominated Main Street,
complete with a balcony and a gigantic screen.
Sundays we’d see the latest Rock Hudson/Doris Day;
it’s where I saw The Graduate, Yellow Submarine,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Then when I went to college in Boston,
I went hog wild at the repertory moviehouses,
all-day double features of Singin’ in the Rain,
Some Like It Hot, M.A.S.H, Citizen Kane, 
you name it, my pals and I smoking 
cigarettes and pot in the dark.  

Now my wife and I go 
to the senior citizen discount matinee,
forego the panini and the brussels sprouts,
but luxuriate in the space age seats,
so comfortable you could fall asleep in them,
if the movie weren’t in your face.

But you know what?
Even though all the other patrons are likewise 
seniors – octogenarians and the rest –
I swear I still smell weed wafting in the air.

The Opposite of Sympathy

The day the New York jury found Donald Trump
guilty on thirty-four felony charges, 
in a courtroom at 100 Centre Street 
in lower Manhattan, further uptown, 
in his condo on the Upper West Side,
my cousin’s body was found by a neighbor, 
dead for several days.

Donald, my cousin, had been battling cancer
for several years, though it seems a heart attack 
caused him to crumple naked in the tub.
He lived alone, his wife having left him
a dozen years before.

We all felt sorry for Donald,
what he’d been reduced to, a deflated balloon,
until we learned he hadn’t left a will,
or even power of attorney –
probate would be lengthy and expensive –
his selfishness exposed like a naked man in a bathtub.

How sad to be seen as a vindictive narcissist,
especially at your lowest point,
even your family gritting their teeth,
not a single sign of sympathy.