Clockwise Cat Strikes Back

they came to his house
to haul him in, said
someone phoned &
told them he was
behaving
irrational.
Irrational.
Irrational to be
the person they don’t
want you to be.
His name was Ports. Larry Ports.
That’s a good name.
It’s a simple name.
It speaks for itself.
But names are just facts.
Last week the cops said
someone named Lawrence
Ports died. That ain’t Boom Boom.
I don’t know where you’ll
be or what you’ll be doing
tonight. But as for me? I’ll be
riding with Boom Boom.
Getting irrational.
Riding with Boom Boom is a barnstorming disguised as a chapbook, and true to karmic form,
Wallace drops us back at the bar—not just any bar; you have your choice of “a punk bar on the
Lower East Side with an indifferent jukebox,” or if you’re in an existential mood, “Max’s
Momentary Bar and Grill”; and if you really want to ride with the angels, you can go to the “Fuck
You Café.” If you ask George Wallace why that’s the best place to end up, he’ll tell you “I drink
to go blind, blind as a newborn pup nosing its way through the underbelly of time—through slime
and fog and fur and dull existence.” Tough stuff. But do not fear. “Warhol’s Soup” offers a quick
comic fix (Hey waiter waiter what’s this jellyfish doing in my Warhol soup / why I’ll tell you
mister it’s doing the Watusi it’s doing the backstroke it’s doing the Merengue & the Fly). And the
poems, for all their hiss and heartbreak, end - yes, poetically - with an outstretched hand and a
yellow flower.
Reviewer bio: Cindy Hochman is the president of “100 Proof” Copyediting Services and the
editor-in-chief of the online journal First Literary Review-East. She is on the book review staff of
Pedestal Magazine, and writes reviews for Home Planet News, great weather for MEDIA, other
publications. Recent poems are published (or forthcoming) in the New York Quarterly, CLWN
WR, Arsenic Lobster, Lips, Pirene’s Fountain, Monkey Bicycle, Muddy River Review, Levure
litérraire, Glimpse (Canada), Unlikely Stories, San Pedro River Review, and Kiyi (Turkey). Her
2011 chapbook, The Carcinogenic Bride, has been recommended on Winning Writers. Her latest
chapbook is Habeas Corpus, from Glass Lyre Press.