After ordering a Seven and 7,
Salisbury steak, and
salad with 1,000 Island dressing,
the waiter asked:
“Where do you think you are---1957?
Elvis shaking his tail,
Little Richard screaming, “I AM Tutti Frutti”
at white bucks poseur Pat Boone,
Ike smiling calm and steady,
Ginsberg Howling,
Rosa resisting,
Little Rock 9 integrating,
ducks tailing, bees hiving,
juke boxes kicking.
Sputnik beeping,
French bikinis teasing,
Hemingway hunting in the African sun,
Kerouc searching without a map,
Atlas shrugging,
Miles and Monk improvising
in smoky dim lit haze,
Marilyn smiling that diamond gleam,
televisions glowing
before Bird’s Eye dinners,
boundaries shifting,
coffee houses whispering
for poets to come with
rebellion in every napkin-written verse,
teenagers ignoring Cold War fears,
smoking Newports and
drinking warm Schlitz
at drive-in movies,
where romantic trysts unfolded.
Year of change.
Cultural spark.
Atomic Age legacy of
drifting souls with conflicted hearts
and coffee-stained fractured dreams.
Greg Clary is a retired college professor who was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia. He now resides in the northern Appalachia Pennsylvania Wilds.
His photographs have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Pine Mt Sand & Gravel, Tiny Seed Journal, Watershed Journal, About Place, Change Seven, Appalachian Lit, and many more.
His writing has been published in Rye Whiskey Review, The Bridge Literary Journal, Northern Appalachia Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Waccamaw Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Black Shamrock Magazine, Rust Belt Review, and Tobeco.
His new book of photographs and poetry, “The Vandalia in Me”, was published by Meraki Press and is available on-line at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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