I dined in a booth adjacent to the one we used to share,
and two dark-skinned Indian girls dined on Burrito Supremes.
I wandered through the parking lot to a downtown intersection,
lost in a daze when a homeless man asked me if I needed anything
after I gave him a cigarette. I lied when I told him no.
lives and writes in Long Beach, California. Recent work has appeared in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Big Hammer, San Pedro River Review, Tailer Park Quarterly, Gravel Magazine, and The Mas Tequila Review, among others. In 2015, his poem, “Her Dead Husband’s Ashes,” was awarded second place in Cultural Weekly’s annual competition, the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart nominee, Ridgeway is the author of six chapbooks of poetry. The latest, Contents Under Pressure, is now available from Crisis Chronicles Press.
