Mike Wilson

RAMSEY

Toledo speakeasy pharaoh,
Purple Gang hanger-on,
cutthroat Ohio Oberon,
took a drunk out back
behind the dumpsters
for brushing up against
tonight's Titania’s thigh,
Oleander of the evening
against soot-caked fingers.

The whole bar heard
what happened:
one burst, one blow,
one bullet's birth
and burrow through bone,
through matter gray and scarlet,
Buckeye buckshot residue
catching hot in the dumpster.

No one looked up from their cups.
Silence but the sound of billowing
smoke from a pistol's pipe.


Mike reads "Ramsey":



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Mike confesses: "This poem was sparked by a lifetime of fascination with gangster movies, some research on Detroit’s Purple Gang and Toledo, and a desire to create a character I could follow through several poems. From there, I followed the sound through lust and into a collision."

MIKE WILSON is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in The Good Men Project and is forthcoming in Blast Furnace.