Marriage On Ice

We exchanged daydreams in a bed tucked
inside a loft as snow fell quietly outside,
Pee-Wee Herman waving at us from a
beat up 1980s Magnavox television screen.
We fucked in between shifts at the pharmacy
across the river from Cornish, where
JD Salinger was hiding, and we searched for
him on days when the roads weren’t as icy,
dressed up in our red work smocks,
whizzing past the mountainside ranch
of Charles Bronson, the house that
Death Wish bought, all of these strange
childhood heroes who haunted
the heartbeat of our imagination in
the otherwise gray, cold deadbeat sludge
we trudged through to the comfort of a bed
shared by young lovers who had no idea
where we were going, our hope ignited
into flames that kept us both warm, our
passion for one another frozen in a time
when we battled an unbroken cabin fever.

Kevin Ridgeway’s latest book is “Invasion of the Shadow People” (Luchador Press).  His work has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, Plainsongs, Meat for Tea, San Pedro River Review and The American Journal of Poetry, among others.  He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.