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He tried to remember when he was a baby.  He could only visualize a Polaroid photograph of a party in his stepfather's basement.  There was his mother, all legs in a mini-skirt, his biological father, clueless, and, among an assortment of other mushroom-haired men, his future stepfather licking the edge of a hand-rolled cigarette. Lots of alcohol and joints were in play, and there he was, Paul,

Some thoughts about that: if not in an opera house then here under the girders of a new civilization in which the contemplative norm is that of a cheeseburger with a face full of sesames.  McCheese is one's neighbor and mayor, and his clown same-sex partner is a cook of sorts, and I guess a lot of people go there.  I have to admit I stopped years ago.  The fried fish sandwiches were about all I

Michael Carrino holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College. He is an English lecturer at the State University College at Plattsburgh, New York, where he is co-editor and poetry editor of the Saranac Review. His publications include Some Rescues, (New Poets Series, Inc.) Under This Combustible Sky, (Mellen Poetry Press) and Café Sonata, (Brown Pepper Press), Autumn's Return to the Maple