C.W. Blackwell

EASTSIDE SHAKEDOWN

It wasn’t personal.

It’s the way you staggered
off the esplanade toward the
shoreline, sea spray blurring
the distance between us, how
no one else could see you
teetering in the sand but me.

You could have been any
Silicon Valley prick with a
gold-plated money clip,
key fob jigsawed with luxury
car logos, breath boiling
with twenty-year Scotch.

But you threw a punch as if
this could never happen to you,
as if taking a little heat after
last call in some gritty beach town
could only happen to renters,
clock-punchers, 9-5 commuters.

And now the water lifts you, sets
you down again. You drift in the
ebb tide facing a cold cottony sky,
a .38 special mushroomed in your
billion-dollar heart as I burn highway
miles in that new Lotus of yours.

Listen, man.
I told you it wasn’t personal.
I just needed it more than you.


C.W.'s YouTube video reading of "Eastside Shakedown":



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C.W. confesses: "I live in a tourist town with a seedy underbelly. We get a lot of wealthy Silicon Valley visitors who treat it like their own personal playground. Sometimes they stay too late, get too drunk, and come face to face with locals who aren't too impressed with their status. Things can get ugly, or worse."

C.W. BLACKWELL is an American crime fiction author and poet. His recent poetry has appeared in Close to the Bone's 4.4 Series, Versification, Punk Noir, and Dead Fern Press. His upcoming poetry book, River Street Rhapsody, will appear in April 2022.

C.W. Blackwell on "Reno" by William R. Soldan

For Day 2 of the Cruelest Poetry Month, the following commentary by Five-Two alum C.W. Blackwell. —Gerald So


Call it “grit lit” or “dirty realism,” the visceral style of melding crime and noir elements in modern poetry feels like it’s buzzing with energy these days, and one of the leaders in this space is poet and author William R. Soldan. His poem “Reno” recently appeared in Close To the Bone’s 4.4 monthly poetry feature:

The poem is soaked in classic noir imagery. Even the title sparks memories of seedy pawn shops and greasy spoons. Indeed, Soldan reminds us on the first line that we’re in the Biggest Little City in the World, revered among authors and poets as a city of downtrodden casinos and topless bars, encased in a rind of snow bloodied by alleyway fistfights.

At first, this seems lost on our young protagonist, who sees the city as “just another dour oasis no different than the last.” We meet an uncle or uncle-like figure with a sordid past, who has a rap sheet that includes robbing casinos and who looks to the protagonist “like a son.” Soldan excels at chronicling the relationships of people living on the razor’s edge, people who are steadfastly loyal to their kin while breaking all the laws in the penal code.

The second stanza introduces us to a sister of the uncle-figure. Is it an aunt? Again, family is a mental construct—and this family grows up fast. She’s been around both literally and figuratively, turning tricks throughout the American west to feed a drug addiction. When she buys the protagonist “smokes and a cold sixer” the action conveys an endearing coming of age moment, and perhaps a sense that for the first time, the protagonist is seen as an equal in the adult world. Here, Soldan gives us a knockout line when he tells of the woman’s husband and how he committed suicide, leaving “nothing but a ghost and red memory.”

In the end, the characters fade away like all the heroes of our formative years. The protagonist wonders about them, evoking nostalgia for a time he got his first taste of an exciting adult world, a world that for many (including the heroes of this poem) often becomes too much to carry. These sentiments and others throughout “Reno” cement Soldan’s reputation as a poet with the heart of a novelist.

I recommend fans of “Reno” pick up a copy of William R. Soldan’s five-star debut poetry collection So Fast, So Close for a highly enjoyable thrill-ride. —C.W. Blackwell

C.W. Blackwell

EYES THE COLOR OF TOBACCO SMOKE

We were young when we found her
and old after that.

The three of us halfway to Arana Creek
stopped to find that old Ford
stuck in the oak tree.
Eddy Clarke swore it was by the bluff
where the ground grew steep
and periwinkles
peppered the deer trails
with lavender leaves.

Ron saw her first,
sprawled in the weeds and dirt,
beset by strange insects --
creatures heralded by that singular stench.
We wept as larvae danced
in the tender cups of her ears.

Maybe it was the girl they’d been looking for;
the one across town
whose window they found
open
in the frozen hours before dawn.

We called from Eddy’s place
and the cop asked
what was the color of her eyes?
but no one would say
for fear of seeing her face
in our minds.

Now thirty years on
I saw Ron in a waterfront bar
in the Rio Flats
and he’d grown fat
and rolled his own cigarettes
and sold car parts on the internet
to the Japanese.

The creek was high that day
and we watched as it quickened
and bled to the bay
and Ron with a hand on my shoulder
held up his cigarette and said:

Blue-gray
Blue-gray
Her eyes were the color of tobacco smoke.

We were young when we found her
and old after that.


C.W. reads "Eyes the Color of Tobacco Smoke":



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C.W. confesses: "I grew up in a neighborhood that bordered a very large forest, and my friends and I would spend hours exploring the old trails there. Once when I was eleven, I discovered the corpse of a woman who had died in an accident several days before. The poem is a combination of these memories."

C.W. BLACKWELL was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California where he still lives today. His passion is to blend poetic narratives with pulp dialogue to create strange and rhythmic genre fiction. He writes mostly crime fiction, dark fiction, and poetry. His recent work has appeared in Pulp Modern, Aphotic Realm, Econoclash Review, and Mystery Weekly Magazine.