we stand on the balcony
of our two star motel,
listening to men and women
scream at each other
for drugs, sex and other
unprotected, filthy things
before we wish upon a
shooting star that turns out
to be a police helicopter
on its way to bathe us out
of our shadows and into
its spotlight with garbled,
static demands to put our
hands in the air, which we
do until we realize they
are talking to the armed
small time kingpin in the
room below us who just
robbed the front lobby
gift shop, and the angry
ice machine hums a
brutal, furious wee hours
soundtrack we can hear
when we peek through
the Johnny Carson curtains
to see if these nightmares
are all still there.
lives and writes in Long Beach, California. Recent work has appeared in Chiron Review, Spillway, 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.
