Thursday, January 11, 2024

Three Poems by Catfish McDaris

Five Finger Discount

Nasty Jack was a greaseball biker

from near the Mexican border, he

got his name from his Levis being

so stiff, he could stand them up in

the corner awaiting his reentrance

 

He was always working on Indians

and Harley Davidsons, occasionally

he applied his magic to four wheel ve-

hicles, but he preferred the freedom

of riding in the wind, unless he was

 

Pulling a big shoplifting job requiring

a crew to cart away the stolen goodies,

his hands were invisible fast, I worked

with him a few times as a distraction

man or driver, Jack knew no fear

 

I’d entered stores with him and never

seen anything, outside he’d unload

eight huge Porterhouse steaks, three

bottles of Heinz 57 and he’d grab a

rack of fifty packs of Marlboros

 

Situated right in front of the checker,

he once walked away with two dollies

of booze, one had nine cases of Corona

and the other had top shelf tequila and gin

 

We never knew what Jack would show

up with next, but he never came home

empty-handed, he wrote a note goodbye and

said forget about being thieves, he was going

fishing at Boca Chica where the Rio Grande

flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.

 

 

Fred & Georgia

 

Fred was a 59 
headbanger always listening 

to Led Zep with his vintage walkman

& saying NO! when nodding

He ate fried chicken through

a straw, drank cocaine, &

snorted whiskey & champagne

nobody squeezed his lemons

One day he ran into Georgia who

was 24 & fan of Bob Marley & sang No Woman 

No Cry at the top of her lungs

completely out of tune

Fred loaded a Meerschaum with

dynamite skunk weed they soon

got naked and watched the egg yolk

sun disappear into the purple black 

Nine months later Georgia

gave birth to a rhinoctopus

they called Ringo Jupiter &

Fred danced like James Brown.

 

 

Quicksand

 

Jose’s amigos arrived from Austin

in a new 4-cylinder Mustang, they

said it had no pep, they asked him

to destroy it for the insurance money

 

They harvested 20 lbs of psilocybin

mushrooms, covered them with honey,

froze them, and transported them in an

ice chest, 10 lbs were Jose’s if he did

 

The car, he wanted to strip it and sell it,

but they insisted he blow it up and burn it

he drove out to a caliche pit followed by

his lady and soaked the Mustang in gas and

torched it, later he called the cops

 

He tried the mushrooms before selling

any, they were strong, sort of like good

acid, but they made him laugh for hours,

Jose decided to go see Iron Butterfly

 

With a quart of Coors he ate some ‘shrooms,

parking his short a few blocks away, the

hallucinations slowed him into snail turtle

motion, his stomach was grizzly growling

 

Seeing a dark backyard, he dropped a load

and a rat dog kept barking so he used it for

ass wipe, he gazed up at the brilliant sky

 

It started raining whores and tequila, he felt

thirsty and stiffer than petrified wood, he led

three senoritas to his car and got a bucket to

catch some cactus juice in, looking in the

back seat he saw the stinky little dog

 

Jose figured he had been adopted, he asked

“What’s your name boy?” The dog replied,

“Quicksand, motherfucker and I need a bath.”



Bio: Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. His best readings were in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy "the Ghost of Hendrix" Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York QuarterlySlipstreamPearlMain St. RagCafé ReviewChiron ReviewZen TattooWormwood ReviewGreat Weather For MediaSilver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, and 2014, he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. He was in the Louisiana ReviewGeorge Mason Univ. Press, and New Coinfrom Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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