#tony gloeggler

[razorsadness]

The siren speeds by my morning window, makes me, half asleep, think it’s racing to Jersey to rescue Ted when I remember building maintenance had already been called, found him dead a week ago and he’s going to be dead from now on. The last time I sat with him in a diner was early March, before Covid hit, after the usual Sunday Parkside afternoon reading. One feature was solid, the other sucked. Ted tried a new one that cracked the audience up and I liked how my new one sounded coming out of my mouth. Ted’s talking to the waitress. She’s maybe 25, Hispanic, with a hint of attitude spicing her words. He orders a turkey burger all the time, asks if they got sweet potato fries even though he knows they do to keep her nearby. I’m deciding between eggs up over corned beef hash or a turkey club with fries, a black and white shake to help it go down. Ted, a germ-a-phobe, washes his hands. A bit of a slob, I don’t.

We agree about the reading. Francine read two strong ones and it’s always good to hear a new one from Puma with or without music. We both wanted to assassinate the political ranter, ignored the guy who rhymed. We wanted someone to gong the woman whose introduction lasted twice as long as her harmless poem and the kid scrolling the poem he finished as the F pulled into Delancey Street needed to reconsider the sanctity of the first draft. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” filters through the sound system and Ted calls the waitress over, asks nicely if she could please change the channel, that this song makes him sick to his stomach. The waitress walks away shaking her head, smiling, while he tells me how he can’t stand fucking Stills, re-tells his story about the night him and his friends threw snowballs at Buffalo Springfield after a show and how the Buffalos chased them down the street until they reached their apartment building safely. Tough Bronx boys my ass I laugh, tell him Steven was a better songwriter than Neil back then. I stop talking, sing along to the dododot ending while he hoped his snowball missed Young, hit Stills. Baseball’s next. Alonso or Judge, deGrom, Cole. Though I know Jacob is the best pitcher on the planet I pump up Cole because it’s more fun to argue and it cracks me up to see Ted agitated, loud. He gets up to hit the bathroom before his trip to Jersey. I hold it in, prefer my home bowl.

We should have talked about suicide. Optimistic me against Ted’s darkness. The idea of control, dignity, the freeing from hopelessness and constant suffering, peace at last, finally, versus everybody dies, why help it out and hurry it along, the finality, the no-going-back of it, just tough your way through like we always do, holding onto the little things that lift us momentarily and if you get to a point you’re thinking about it, say something. I’ll Uber to Jersey, beat you with a stick ball bat, knock some sense into your cement-hard head, alright?

It’s March, 70 degrees, Covid’s loosening its grip. Go for a brisk walk, lift your hands out of pockets. Women and girls parade Avenues looking more wonderful than ever after all this covering up, isolation. It’s time to get out of Jersey, head to Brighton Beach, that apartment you talked about. Sit on the boardwalk. Smell the ocean, hang out with Al Gal, down a few cold ones. Opening Day is three weeks away, the Mets are certain contenders, even the Knicks are watchable. Ted, you dumb fuck, where are you? There are poems only you could write, people who want to read them. I just finished a new one. I want to email it to you. I am waiting for you to tear it apart or love it a lot.

—Tony Gloeggler, “Aftermath” (Rattle #73, Fall 2021)

[contremineur]

Tony Gloeggler, final lines to Before

from here

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Tony Gloeggler

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Tony Gloeggler

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others…

[tlhopkinson]

NO FEE Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, $900 in prizes! - Cultural Weekly, DEADLINE: Aug. 31, 2020

NO FEE Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, $900 in prizes! – Cultural Weekly, DEADLINE: Aug. 31, 2020

Cultural Weekly’s 8th annual Jack Grapes Poetry Prize is open! This year they are awarding three winners and six finalists. The three winners will receive $200 each, plus publication. The six finalists will receive $50 each, plus publication.

The contest is free to enter and will be judged by poets Bunkong Tuon, Tony Gloeggler, and Alexis Rhone Fancher.

I wondered how and why this contest came to…

[missedstations]

“Anyway” - Tony Gloeggler

After we dropped dirt on my father’s coffin the long line of cars drove back to the house. We stood in circles, took turns sitting at the kitchen counter and ate cold cuts. My mother introduced me to all her work friends as her son, the poet. One young woman knew it wasn’t the time or place, but always wondered why people wrote poetry. I told her I hoped to become rich and famous, fall in and out of love with multitudes of smart, beautiful, mixed-up women. She shook her head, said maybe I should leave you alone so you can go somewhere and write. I didn’t follow her, didn’t apologize for acting like an asshole. I walked upstairs, opened the door to my old room, looked for my bed and desk, my stacks of albums. I wanted to blast “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” start writing in a new notebook. I wanted my father to pound his fist on the door, yell turn that goddamn shit down, stick his head inside and ask what are you doing anyway? I wanted to hand him my notebook, watch him sit in his chair, turn on the lamp and read, slowly, his forefinger underlining all the words, his lips whispering every syllable.

[100pitchersofhoney]

"Anyway"

by Tony Gloeggler

After we dropped dirt on my father’s coffin the long line of cars drove back to the house. We stood in circles, took turns sitting at the kitchen counter and ate cold cuts. My mother introduced me to all her work friends as her son, the poet. One young woman knew it wasn’t the time or place, but always wondered why people wrote poetry. I told her I hoped to become rich and famous, fall in and out of love with multitudes of smart, beautiful, mixed-up women. She shook her head, said maybe I should leave you alone so you can go somewhere and write. I didn’t follow her, didn’t apologize for acting like an asshole. I walked upstairs, opened the door to my old room, looked for my bed and desk, my stacks of albums. I wanted to blast “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” start writing in a new notebook. I wanted my father to pound his fist on the door, yell turn that goddamn shit down, stick his head inside and ask what are you doing anyway? I wanted to hand him my notebook, watch him sit in his chair, turn on the lamp and read, slowly, his forefinger underlining all the words, his lips whispering every syllable.

[motherground]

Anyway

After we dropped dirt on my father’s coffin the long line of cars drove back to the house. We stood in circles, took turns sitting at the kitchen counter and ate cold cuts. My mother introduced me to all her work friends as her son, the poet. One young woman knew it wasn’t the time or place, but always wondered why people wrote poetry. I told her I hoped to become rich and famous, fall in and out of love with multitudes of smart, beautiful, mixed-up women. She shook her head, said maybe I should leave you alone so you can go somewhere and write. I didn’t follow her, didn’t apologize for acting like an asshole. I walked upstairs, opened the door to my old room, looked for my bed and desk, my stacks of albums. I wanted to blast “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” start writing in a new notebook. I wanted my father to pound his fist on the door, yell turn that goddamn shit down, stick his head inside and ask what are you doing anyway? I wanted to hand him my notebook, watch him sit in his chair, turn on the lamp and read, slowly, his forefinger underlining all the words, his lips whispering every syllable.

-- tony gloeggler

[contremineur]

I once slept with a woman who worked a few months at the group home I run, but only after I fired her for a no call no show weekend that left the shifts severely undermanned. Next day, we ran into each other on the subway, rode through Manhattan together, hugged goodbye. Four days later, Denise waited for me outside work, went all the way home with me. After fucking the night away, we went to the diner for breakfast. Grits for her, home fries for me. We ended up at the schoolyard. She took me down low, bumped me with her lovely ass, while I tried to ignore my hard on. I kept the score close, but always won. She was younger, I was older. I had money, she had none. I was lighter, she was darker. She was beautiful, I was not. We never could agree on a radio station. We both liked Al Green, but never the same songs. She loved the back-to-back black shows on NBC Thursday nights, I preferred Law & Order. She never read my poetry. I felt her rap rhymes silly and forced. She liked things rough and hard, I liked to watch my cum slide slowly down her dark inner thighs. I didn’t know if she was hoping to get her job back, looking for some kind of love or a few weekends of outside-the-neighbourhood fun. I wasn’t doing any thinking at all. Just last week, she was standing in line at the corner bodega. Coffee for her, Snapple for me. She still looked good. Me, worse than before. Once, she said, she saw me walking by in some long ago summer as she sat in a shady park rocking her baby for an afternoon nap. She said I never looked her way, but she knows if I did I would have stopped, leaned down for a soft quick kiss and told her that her daughter was as beautiful as she is. I smiled, knew she was right.

Tony Gloeggler, Some long ago summer

from here

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Kevin Ridgeway

lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. He is the author of six previous chapbooks, including ‘All the Rage’ (Electric Windmill), On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco) and Contents Under Pressure (Crisis Chronicles). He is co-author of the book, A Ludicrous Split (alongside poems by Gabriel Ricard, Alien Buddha Press). Recent work has appeared in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Up the River, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Main Street Rag, Lummox, Big Hammer, Cultural Weekly, Spillway, Hobo Camp Review and So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, among others.

https://www.analogsubmission.com/product/smile-until-you-re-alive-enough-to-be-dead-by-kevin-ridgeway

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

Girls and rock and roll music.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

My older brother who studied Shakespeare and other classic poetics in his youth–he left them behind when he went to college and I found a teacher and an inspiration in those books. I also used to think “Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams was a piece of shit and that I could do better. I was wrong, but here I am twenty years later releasing the poems I write these days out into the loud and scary world we live in, where poets are bullied on school campuses and at coffee houses everywhere. And are now grown ups in an assault of words.

3 How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

I live in Long Beach, CA, and my poetry elders here are people like Dr. Gerald Locklin, Fred Voss and Joan Jobe Smith–they let themselves be known and heard. I’m fortunate to see these people read their work in person–it’s an inspiring environment to be in.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I get up at 5 every morning to write until 8 each morning. I work on new poems, revisions, correspondences and the management of my submissions out to magazines and journals. And the end of the day–730 pm to midnight–reading and writing until sleep.

5. What motivates you to write?

My monkey brains and the poems of other poets.

6. What is your work ethic?

The harder you work at your craft and the more often that you work at it, the more likely you are to grow and thrive creatively and within the parameters of one’s chosen genre of literary craft. I am known as a prolific writer and I take great pride in that because I work hard to make my words at least work, let alone sing off the page. I consider important to keep practicing for that great gem of a poem or master work few are lucky to ever realize in a revision that’s published, read and remembered by readers. Poems like Red Wheelbarrow

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

They are in my head, always. I absorbed them and they are like angels and demons doing a punishing dance on my shoulders.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Tony Gloeggler is the best poet around these days, for me as a reader. He writes excellent and gorgeous narrative poetry that has such great realism and brush stroke accurate attention to detail. He writes about his youth in the 60s and 70s in ways that enthrall, surprise and beat the hell out of me. Even his line breaks are the very best–I geek out on line breaks. I dig Dr. Gerald Locklin, Fred Voss, Joan Jobe Smith, Clint Margrave, Bunkong Tuon, Ted Jonathan, Alan Catlin, John Dorsey, Daniel Crocker, Rebecca Schumejda, Wendy Rainey, Curtis Hayes, Bill Gainer, William Taylor,Jr., Steve Henn, Francesca Bell and Alexis Rhone Fancher, to name just a few.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

Writing is easier than painting, which I am terrible at even attempting. My doodles are good. I’m better off typing or with a pen in my hand. Not much else.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

You don’t. You’re born one. Even if it lies dormant in you, you are born one. I was born to be a writer.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

Right now the hot thing on my street corner is the forthcoming publication of my debut full length book of poetry “Too Young to Know” from the great Stubborn Mule Press. It involves poems about my origins, some of my struggles and lots and lots of death thrown in for good measure. It adheres to Frank Zappa’s theory of conceptual continuity, which is important to me. I look forward to promoting it.

I have published nine chapbooks over the years. A Ludicrous Split (2018, a split with Gabriel Ricard, Alien Buddha Press) and Smile Until You’re Alive Enough to Be Dead (2018, Analog Submission Press, UK) are my two latest and greatest.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Kevin Ridgeway Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[100pitchersofhoney]

"Five Years Later"

by Tony Gloeggler

My brother was on his way to a dental appointment when the second plane hit four stories below the office where he worked. He’s never said anything about the guy who took football bets, how he liked to watch his secretary walk, the friends he ate lunch with, all the funerals. Maybe, shamed by his luck, he keeps quiet, afraid someone might guess how good he feels, breathing.

[collectingroots]

1969

My brother enlisted in the winter. I pitched for the sixth grade Indians and coach said I was almost as good as Johnny. My mother fingered rosary beads, watched Cronkite say and that's the way it is. I smoked my first and last cigarette. My father kept his promise, washed Johnny's Mustang every weekend. Brenda Whitson taught me how to French kiss in her basement. Sundays we went to ten o'clock Mass, dipped hands in holy water, genuflected, walked down the aisle and received Communion. Cleon Jones got down on one knee, caught the last out and the Mets won the World Series. Two white-gloved Marines rang the bell, stood on our stoop. My father watched their car pull away, then locked the wooden door. I went to our room, climbed into the top bunk, pounded a hardball into his pillow. My mother found her Bible, took out my brother's letters, put them in the pocket of her blue robe. My father started Johnny's car, revved the engine until every tool hanging in the garage shook. -Tony Gloeggler

[contremineur]

I once slept with a woman who worked a few months at the group home I run, but only after I fired her for a no call no show weekend that left the shifts severely undermanned. Next day, we ran into each other on the subway, rode through Manhattan together, hugged goodbye. Four days later, Denise waited for me outside work, went all the way home with me. After fucking the night away, we went to the diner for breakfast. Grits for her, home fries for me. We ended up at the schoolyard. She took me down low, bumped me with her lovely ass, while I tried to ignore my hard on. I kept the score close, but always won. She was younger, I was older. I had money, she had none. I was lighter, she was darker. She was beautiful, I was not. We never could agree on a radio station. We both liked Al Green, but never the same songs. She loved the back-to-back black shows on NBC Thursday nights, I preferred Law & Order. She never read my poetry. I felt her rap rhymes silly and forced. She liked things rough and hard, I liked to watch my cum slide slowly down her dark inner thighs. I didn’t know if she was hoping to get her job back, looking for some kind of love or a few weekends of outside-the-neighborhood fun. I wasn’t doing any thinking at all. Just last week, she was standing in line at the corner bodega. Coffee for her, Snapple for me. She still looked good. Me, worse than before. Once, she said, she saw me walking by in some long ago summer as she sat in a shady park rocking her baby for an afternoon nap. She said I never looked her way, but she knows if I did I would have stopped, leaned down for a soft quick kiss and told her that her daughter was as beautiful as she is. I smiled, knew she was right.

Tony Gloeggler, Some long ago summer

https://www.rattle.com/some-long-ago-summer-by-tony-gloeggler/

[contremineur]

My brother enlisted in the winter. I pitched for the sixth grade Indians and coach said I was almost as good as Johnny. My mother fingered rosary beads, watched Cronkite say and that’s the way it is. I smoked my first and last cigarette. My father kept his promise, washed Johnny’s Mustang every weekend. Brenda Whitson taught me how to French kiss in her basement. Sundays we went to ten o’clock Mass, dipped hands in holy water, genuflected, walked down the aisle and received communion. Cleon Jones got down on one knee, caught the last out and the Mets won the World Series. Two white-gloved Marines rang the bell, stood on our stoop. My father watched their car pull away, then locked the wooden door. I went to our room, climbed into the top bunk, pounded a hardball into his pillow. My mother found her Bible, took out my brother’s letters, put them in the pocket of her blue robe. My father started Johnny’s car, revved the engine until every tool hanging in the garage shook.

Tony Gloeggler, 1969

http://www.rattle.com/1969-by-tony-gloeggler/