Charles Rammelkamp

DONALD TRUMPSKY

“I have never rated Stalin
so highly as to be able to hate him,”
Leon Trotsky once observed,
the best-known leftwing critic
of Stalinism in the world,
dismissing his rival as tawdry, unworthy,
no doubt pissing off thin-skinned Uncle Joe,
who invoked Trotsky’s name
throughout the Moscow show trials,
the Great Purge of the late thirties:
Leon the sinister source of all disloyalty, sabotage,
the classic purveyor of fake news.

Founder and commander of the Red Army,
Trotsky lost the power struggle
after Lenin’s death in 1924,
ended up in exile in Mexico,
after a year in Alma-Ata in Central Asia,
then Turkey, France, Norway.

Stalin’s agents tracked him down.
But he survived a machine-gun attack
just as he’d survived prison and Siberia
as far back as 1900,
a proverbial cat with nine lives.
But on August 20, 1940, 
NKVD agent Mercador did him in
with an ice-ax blow to the skull
outside his compound in Coyoacan.
So Uncle Joe finally got his revenge
against the fake news.
Take THAT, Crooked Hillary! Take THAT, Sleepy Joe!


Charles's YouTube reading of "Donald Trumpsky"


Charles confesses: "Donald Trump seems to have the same brutal instincts and lack of self-humor as Joseph Stalin and given the opportunity will no doubt exercise the same ruthlessness; he already has. Talk about “show trials” – Trump’s (against Letitia James, Jim Comey, Mark Kelly, etc., etc.) have basically been joke trials."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His collection, The Tao According to Calvin Coolidge, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

ORANGE LIES MATTER

one of the signs at the protest rally declared.
The man is legendary, spewing falsehoods,
some innocuous, stupid, childish, boastful,
others malicious, dangerous and hurtful.

Remember the one about Haitians
eating other people’s household pets?
How he insisted it was true?
One of the most basic urban legends around,
immigrants eating neighbors’ dogs,
like alligators in the sewer system.
I wonder if he even believed it.

One thing’s for sure:
lots of people did, and those poor Haitians
in Springfield were scared shitless,
righteous MAGA followers ready to kill,
all for the lies of a deranged old man.

A funny Facebook meme –
An interviewer asks Trump,
“What’s your favorite lie?”
Trump answers “I don’t lie.”
The interviewer says:
“Yeah, I love that one, too.”


Charles' YouTube reading of "Orange Lies Matter"


Charles confesses: "Sometimes I think I am over Trump's constant lying - What else is new? Just more background noise. But at others I realize just how dangerous he is and I become enraged all over again."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? was recently published by Kelsay Books, and another collection of persona poems and dramatic monologues involving burlesque stars, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, was recently published by BlazeVOX Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

(F)ELON

His henchmen something like Alex and his droogs
from A Clockwork Orange,
marching into government offices,
ransacking electronic payment programs,
stealing sensitive personal information–
the classic image of “jack-booted thugs”–
the only thing missing,
the classical music soundtrack
while they pillage the federal bureaucracy.

In his tee-shirts, dark jackets, and pompadour
Musk, the perfect image of a punk gangleader,
doing all the things
the rightwing accuses George Soros ofand more.
But he has the godfather’s blessing,
and he gets away with it all,
the real felon in charge turning a blind eye
while the courts and legislature flail about,
hair on fire with cries of “constitutional crisis.”


Charles' YouTube reading of "(f)Elon"


Charles confesses: "I worked at the Social Security Administration for years. I feel so sorry for the people I used to work with, the anxiety and stress the oligarchs are putting them through. I’m also glad I don’t have to endure any of that personally. Life is complicated enough without the "Department of Government Efficiency” trying to take control."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? was recently published by Kelsay Books, and another collection of persona poems and dramatic monologues involving burlesque stars, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, was recently published by BlazeVOX Books.

The Trapeze of Your Flesh by Charles Rammelkamp

Frequent contributor Charles Rammelkamp's latest BlazeVOX book is available for pre-order.

See What I Mean? by Charles Rammelkamp

Frequent contributor Charles Rammelkamp's latest Kelsay Books release, See What I Mean?, includes his 2013 Five-Two poem "The Day Sadat Died" and is blurbed by Bob Cooperman and Eric D. Goodman.

Charles Rammelkamp

JEALOUS GUY

“Ever notice how John Lennon
goes almost Full Othello
in some of those early Beatles songs?”

“Such as?”

"Well, there’s that song
from the Hard Day’s Night album,
‘You Can’t Do That’:
If I catch you talking to that boy again..."

"Oh right! The guy threatening
his girlfriend because she dares
talk to his pals. He tells her
they’d laugh in his face
if they’d seen the way she was flirting."

“Everybody’s greeeeeen.”

“The green-eyed monster!
It’s a matter of pride.
Only, there’s no Iago goading him on.”

“Then there’s that one from Rubber Soul,
‘Run for Your Life.’ Even the title’s threatening!
He tells the girl he’d rather see her dead
than to ‘catch her with another man.’
Same deal with the jealousy.
You read stories in the tabloids
about jealous guys killing their girlfriends.”

“And here I was thinking
all those Beatles songs reeked
of puppy love, holding hands.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Jealous Guy"


Charles confesses: "I was always a little astounded by how vicious some of those Beatles songs sounded. Even “She Loves You” – is the guy the “hurting kind”? Is that verbal or physical? Well, best not to overthink it. All you need is love, right?"

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His latest poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner and has just been published. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also just been published by BlazeVOX Books. A collection of flash fiction, Presto!, will be published in 2023 by Bamboo Dart Press.

Charles Rammelkamp

VENOM

The act I was best known for?
Probably the dance I performed
with my boa constrictors, Elmer and Oscar.

My snake charmer friend Anand
gave them to me when we worked together
at the Zorro Garden Nudist Colony,
in San Diego, where I’d fled at seventeen.

Born Kathryn Boyd in Youngstown, Ohio,
adopted by a strict Methodist couple in Chicago,
I was working as a manicurist in the Loop
when a client told me I could make extra money
stripping at stag parties.
I was fifteen, but I had a full figure.

At Zorro Garden, the women went topless,
G-strings covering our cooches,
the men in loincloths, all of us “natural.”
Customers watched us from bleacher seats,
or they could stare for free through knotholes in the fence.
It’s where I got my name, Zorita.
I added a tongue and a tail to either end of the Z
when I signed autographs for fans.

I took Elmer and Oscar with me back to Toledo,
where I developed my act at the Kentucky Club.
One dance I called “Half and Half,” half my body
dressed as a groom, the other a bride,
each side undressing the other,
leading to the “wedding night romp.”
In another, an invisible spider undressed me
while I danced before a rhinestone-covered web.

But it was “The Consummation of the Wedding of the Snake”
that was my most famous – the one that got me in trouble –
stripping while holding one of my eight-foot boas.
I got six months in prison for that one,
snakebit by the local cops for “indecent exposure.”


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Venom":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "How much more biblical can you get? Nudity, a snake, a garden. Talk about 'original sin.' A story in the August 16, 1941 Toledo Blade credited Zorita’s 'undraped gyrations' with the creation of a police squad assigned solely to the night clubs. But Zorita got the last laugh. Known to walk her snakes around on leads, she ended her days in Florida raising Persian cats."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP's A Magician Among the Spirits, a collection of poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner and has just been published. A collection of flash fiction, Presto!, will be published in 2023 by Bamboo Dart Press. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has been published by BlazeVOX Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

GETTING EVEN AND GETTING AHEAD

Born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaido,
I moved to Chicago with my family in 1942.
The anti-Japanese bullying was bad enough,
but just before my tenth birthday,
a group of five teenagers raped me
when I was coming home from the grocery
with a loaf of bread for my mother.
Those boys were never prosecuted.

But my dad taught me martial arts – akido and karate –
and over the next fifteen years I got my revenge
on each and every one of those guys.
I dare say they suffered more than I had,
let’s leave it at that.

I married John Satana at thirteen,
started working Illinois nightclubs
after the marriage fell apart nine months later –
burlesque dancing, nude modeling –
my act combining martial arts and tassel-twirling.
Then I moved to LA, where the action was.

What a life! I dated Elvis and Sinatra,
worked the Trocadero on Sunset Strip,
had bit parts in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,
a prostitute in Billy Wilder’s Irma la Duce
starred in a number of B movies –
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and The Astro-Zombies among them.
But I had to quit acting
after an ex-boyfriend shot me in the stomach.

I also tossed in the towel on burlesque
  when California licensing laws led
club owners to require dancers to work topless.
I was a performer, not a sideshow freak.
So I got into hotel security in Reno,
trademarked my image, cashed in
on an action figure, Halloween masks, t-shirts,
worked the cult film conventions.

One time? I had to deal with this over-enthusiastic fan
who hid in my hotel room. He wound up
with a broken arm, busted nose and a twisted leg.
The house detective carried him out.


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Getting Even and Getting Ahead":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "I’ve been researching burlesque stars of the twentieth century – vedettes, exotic dancers. Not surprisingly, they all seem to have interesting lives, often in the demimonde where noir thrives and crime is not uncommon. Tura Satana was a real noir figure, for sure! Born in Japan 1938, she grew up in Chicago, started dancing as a teen at the Club Rendezvous in Calumet City, where she was known as Galatea, the “Statue the Came to Life.” And that was just the start of a career that included television roles, an exploitation film, and a scifi horror cult classic The Astro Zombies."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP's A Magician Among the Spirits, a collection of poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner and has just been published. A collection of flash fiction, Presto!, will be published in 2023 by Bamboo Dart Press. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has been accepted by BlazeVOX Books.

Book Launch: A Magician Among the Spirits by Charles Rammelkamp

Frequent contributor Charles Rammelkamp's book, A Magician Among the Spirits (ISBN: 978-1421835310),  winner of the 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry Award, launches today.

Charles Rammelkamp gets right under Houdini’s skin to create a first-person poetic autobiography that brings the world’s most famous escape artist to life.

“A Magician Among the Spirits is a fast moving, deeply engrossing story of magic, transformation, drama, mystery, travel, and trauma in 55 poems that trace the course of Houdini’s life, from his first dabblings in magic to his slightly mysterious death described in the coda by bereaved wife Beatrice. A striking portrayal of Houdini, as richly lyrical as it is engrossing.”

~Magdalena Ball, Editor-in-chief, Compulsive Reader

The poems in this book — direct, meditative, sometimes playful — cohere into a headlong narrative that is never less than compelling. Here, readers will find a uniquely American tale of perseverance and reinvention, as Rammelkamp’s Houdini reminds us of “How we escape to who we really are!”

-Jon Ballard, author of Year of the Poets and Possible Lives

Order from: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookstore.

Charles Rammelkamp

THE INTELLECTUAL STRIPPER

I was already at the top of my career,
moving on from the striptease ghetto
to a full-fledged burlesque act,
to the Ziegfeld Follies, Hollywood,
the New York World’s Fair,
now I could pursue my dream
of being a successful writer.
Gypsy Rose Lee was already a star!

When I moved into 7 Middagh Street
with Carson McCullers, Wystan Auden
and my friend George Davis,
I was all fired up to write a murder mystery,
The G-String Murders, the murder weapon
a chorus girl’s G-string.

When I didn’t have to attend a meeting downtown
or make an appearance at a charity event,
or attend a Broadway opening,
I spent afternoons in my third-floor rooms
working with George on the plot,
the death of Lolita La Verne and the rest.

But the trouble with writing?
It’s hard work, and not having a contract
with a publisher was like being all made up,
ready to go on stage...
and not knowing what theater you’re playing!

So just before Christmas, I told George
I was going to Chicago to join Mike Todd
I worked on G-String in my dressing room,
writing revisions while starring
in several shows a day at Todd’s Theatre Café,
collaborating with my editor, Lee Wright.

But you know what? It paid off!
After The G-String Murders came out,
by winter it was the best-selling mystery
since Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man!


Charles's YouTube video reading of "The Intellectual Stripper":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "I’ve recently become interested in the lives of the famous burlesque stars of the first half of the twentieth century – Sally Rand, April March, Candy Barr and the rest. My research took me to Sherill Tippins’ book, February House, about the time Gypsy Rose Lee, Carson McCullers, W.H. Auden and others lived in a house in Brooklyn together, in 1940. Gypsy’s story was fascinating! I had never heard of The G-String Murders before, but it sounds like a gas! I’m getting a copy!"

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP's latest poetry collection, The Field of Happiness, has just been published by Kelsay Books. Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip and The Compulsive Reader. A collection of flash fiction, Presto!, will be published in 2023 by Bamboo Dart Press.

Charles Rammelkamp

TOTAL IMMERSION

Officer Nichols gave Betsy the option:
“If you let me baptize you,
I’ll let you go with a citation.”
He’d found marijuana in her car
when he stopped her for running a redlight.
Nichols told her God was talking to him.

Betsy didn’t want to go to jail.
She followed Nichols out to Duck Lake,
Nichols calling another cop, Ron Hayes,
to record the dunking on his cellphone,
Betsy’s wet t-shirt molding her breasts.

Later, Betsy sued.
“He touched my crotch
when he handcuffed me,” she claimed,
Nichols indicted on several dozen counts,
including rape, assault, official oppression.

That was in 2019,
the case repeatedly postponed,
because of the pandemic.
Now Betsy’s been found dead in her home,
a healthy 42-year-old woman,
the cause of her death unclear.


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Total Immersion":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "Where else but America? When I read about the Tennessee police officer coercing the woman he’d arrested into a “baptism” – which resembled a sexual assault more than a purification rite – and then about her mysterious death when she pressed charges, I was horrified at the same time that the incident sounded so familiar. The policeman has been involved in almost four dozen lawsuits including rape and “official oppression.” I did not read that he had been fired or suspended or even slapped on the wrist."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP's latest poetry collection, The Field of Happiness, has just been published by Kelsay Books. Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, and The Compulsive Reader.

Charles Rammelkamp

READY, AIM

The only way to delay
my lethal injection execution?
Pick an alternate way to die.
I’m going for a firing squad.

Otherwise, I’ll die next week,
unless the judge grants
a temporary injunction
to halt the execution for now.

My clemency request denied
six weeks ago, the parole board voting
four to one against,
they picked next week’s date.

My crime? A quadruple slaying,
revenge against the people
responsible for crippling my dad
in a motorcycle accident two decades ago.

They sentenced me to two death penalties.
How many times can a person die?
I’d chased two of them with a rifle,
shot them down as they tried to escape.

“In her final moments,” the DA argued,
“when she was screaming and clawing the ground,
he shot her three times in the back.
Why should he deserve the mercy he denied his victims?”

But I’d been strung out on meth
since I was twelve, an excitable boy.
“He’s a different man now,” my lawyer observed.
“He deserves our forgiveness.”

No dice. So my Hail Mary request
to extend my life, asking to be hanged instead.
My biggest mistake?
Killing those dogs in Oklahoma.


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Ready, Aim":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "There’s so much going on in this story about Gilbert Postelle requesting to be put to death by firing squad, a legal move to delay his execution; first of all, there’s the violence that’s so pervasive in America (Gilbert participated in the revenge murder of four people in Oklahoma City in 2005) but also the tragedy of drug addiction and the excessive use of the death sentence in places like Oklahoma and Texas."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

LITTLE RED CORVETTE

Why’d I kill Brian and Kelly Sue?
Ten years older than me,
he’s always pulled that Big Brother shit,
Mister Know-It-All Pharmacist,
looking down his nose at me,
but he was killing people
with those Covid vaccines.
I knew it, and he knew it.

Time was short, too. I told my mom
the FBI was coming after us.
Of course, she didn’t believe it, worried
I was going mental on her.
But she’s an old lady, like her friend Becky.

I didn’t want to hurt Becky,
but I needed her car, that big old Lincoln
she never drives anyway
except to go to Burger King with Mom,
two old ladies in their eighties.

After I shot Brian and Kelly Sue,
I knew I might as well give up.
But I’d always wanted to drive
Brian’s midlife crisis mobile,
that little red Corvette of his,
the one he taunted me with,
just a loser taking care of our mother
as far as Brian was concerned.

I drove that baby all the way to Davis,
in the West Virginia Canaan Valley,
along the Blackwater River,
spent the night at the Billy Motel & Bar,
flagged down a firefighter next day,
turned myself in. As I explained,
I had no choice. I was forced to kill them.


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Little Red Corvette":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: When I read about this obvious 'loser', a middle aged guy living at home with his 83-year-old mom in rural Maryland, killing his older brother, a pharmacist, for administering Covid vaccines, my first thought was rightwing nutcase, swayed by the disinformation industry, but when I read that he’d made off with his brother’s Corvette, I wondered if there weren’t something more elemental going on, in the Jacob-and-Esau sibling jealousy and resentment mode."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife Abby. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, and The Compulsive Reader. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT?

Well, yeah, the guy was mental,
nobody’s going to dispute that,
but to say he wasn’t responsible
for killing those six people at Burger Blast
because he suffered from a paranoid delusion
involving businesses blocking his efforts
to rehabilitate his reputation
after all the publicity surrounding
his harassment charge against
a former high school classmate, a popular girl
when they were in school together,
now an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant?
Seriously?

Could the psychiatrist the defense retained
really convince a jury –
or cast “reasonable doubt” –
that Kingsbury’s “delusional disorder,”
coupled with his autism
and the anxiety caused by his OCD,
meant he wasn’t responsible
for gunning down those people
as if they were targets
at a shooting gallery?

That’s just insane!


Charles's YouTube video reading of "Would You Like Fries with That?":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "In 2018 Jarrod Ramos gunned down five people at the Capital Gazette newspaper offices in Annapolis, MD. When the case came to trial in 2021, the defense attorneys’ jaw-dropping defense was that Ramos was insane at the time the crime was committed because of a combination of mental conditions that led him to become obsessed with the newspaper after it covered his 2011 harassment conviction. They claimed he’d developed delusions that the courts were persecuting him, too, since they’d rejected his defamation lawsuits. The jury didn’t buy it."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife Abby. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, and The Compulsive Reader. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

A DAUGHTER REMEMBERS HER FATHER

I always liked the Joe Mantegna character in Levinson’s Liberty Heights.
That’s exactly how my dad was, a family man.
Only, he didn’t go quietly to federal prison, like in the movie,
but jumped the $80,000 bail, fled to Montreal,
then lived his life out in Tel Aviv.

For years the FBI never had a clue
what became of “The Lord,” as my dad was called,
a slick dresser in his tailor-made suits:
Julius Salsbury cut a real aristocratic figure.
Dad even insisted I wear dresses to school, a little lady.
He ran his gambling operation out of the Oasis Cabaret
on The Block, Baltimore’s red-light district,
even though we lived near the Pimlico racetrack.
Daddy loved the horse races!

The FBI was always locking him up.
I remember visiting him at the Jessup prison
when I was just a child.
But fifteen years behind bars? No way.
He left Baltimore hidden in a horse van,
that August night in 1970,
buried under a pile of hay!
The feds never knew where he went,
figured he might have fled to Cuba.

I visited him every year in Israel,
always looking over my shoulder,
until he died from bone cancer in 1994.
Mom died a only couple of days later,
both our hearts broken.


Clarinda Harriss's YouTube video reading of "A Daughter Remembers Her Father":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "Recently, fifty years after her father absconded to Israel in 1970, facing fifteen years in a federal penitentiary, his daughter, Rochelle, now just a year or two shy of 70, broke her silence about her father’s flight from the feds and told all to the Baltimore Sun. I hadn’t known Julius Salsbury was the prototype for Nate Kurtzman in Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights when I had an opportunity to be an extra in a Yom Kippur synagogue scene in 1998."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Charles Rammelkamp on "Attempted Suicide" by Tony Dawson

Tony Dawson’s witty noir poem in which a husband and wife argue about the man’s proposal to kill himself, reminds me of the scene of choreographed violence in A Clockwork Orange, in which Alex and his droogies viciously beat a man bloody to the tune of Rossini’s Thieving Magpie, director Stanley Kubrick turning the “ultraviolence” into a kind of operatic performance. In the same way, utterly gruesome details of the proposed self-murder are amusingly related in a “civilized,” rational tone as the man and woman weigh the options. Indeed, the couple perform a graceful sort of pas de deux of their own, a Danse Macabre. When he first suggests the idea, she is horrified, but only on aesthetic grounds, by the idea of his hanging himself. “I don’t fancy bumping into carrion.”

“I could shoot myself if you prefer. I’ll buy a gun.
“You can’t do that. There’ll be blood all over the walls!”
she growled. “Why not line the room with plastic for a dry run?”
he suggested. “It will still look like bloody Niagara Falls!”

Dawson’s ABAB rhymes even suggest a dance, both of them stepping forward and back, as if their steps are synchronized, ballroom style. They consider options from poison (“But what if the dog licks your face and dies?” she objects.) to slashing his wrists in the bathtub. She suggests he simply drink himself to death in a bar. “Drink makes me ill,” he replies. “Why don’t you simply nag me to death?”

“Because that would be murder, not suicide, my dear.”

They end up in the classic Mexican standoff, he suggesting they set aside the negotiations for another day. She agrees and suggests they “put the rope, poison and plastic away, and go for a walk.” It’s as if the music has concluded, the couple has bowed to one another, and they’ve gone back to their seats. —Charles Rammelkamp


Follow along for the entire Cruelest Poetry Month. —Gerald So

Charles Rammelkamp

WHEELIE QUEEN

First homicide of the year in Baltimore?
Lakeyria Doughty, star dirt bike rider,
featured in Charm City Kings,
the movie produced by Hollywood
power couple, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett,
alleged to have stabbed her ex,
a chef named Tiffany Wilson,
who’d tried breaking up with her,
asking Doughty to return the keys to her apartment,
pleading with Doughty to leave her alone.

In the early hours on New Year’s Day,
Doughty called 911, frantic, claiming Wilson
had stabbed herself with a kitchen knife,
that she, Doughty, had tried saving her with CPR.

But the cops said Wilson
couldn’t possibly have stabbed herself,
the wound in her chest
not possibly self-inflicted,
not to mention signs of a fight
in Wilson’s Sandtown apartment,
charging Doughty with murder,
holding her without bail.


Charles reads "Wheelie Queen":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses: "For several years Baltimore has struggled with crime and an alarming murder rate. It didn’t help that Donald Trump smeared the city as a 'shithole' without offering any help or consolation. When I read about the first homicide of 2021, I thought, uh-oh, the new year hasn’t changed a lot."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Charles Rammelkamp

JANUARY 6, 2021

“She was a real piece of work,”
Josh shook his head.
“I remember one time
she chased down the road
after a woman
who’d dated her boyfriend,
here in Annapolis,
rammed her car!
This was a year or so before
she divorced her husband,
moved out to San Diego.

“Had an American flag in her yard,
military plaques and such,
you know, a real rightwing shrine.
She’d been in the Air Force,
worked at the nuclear power plant.”

Josh seemed lost in memory
but re-focused, addressed the reporter
sitting next to him,
pen poised over a notebook.

“So yeah, no surprise she was there
with the mob storming the Capitol.
I heard the last thing she posted on Twitter,
before she was killed,
was an American flag and thumbs-up emojis
alongside the comment, ‘Jan 6, 2021.’”


Charles reads "January 6, 2021":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Charles confesses:"Initially, I feared the person who was shot at the Capitol during the insurrection that President Trump incited may have been an innocent staffer. Later, I found out that Ashli Babbitt was a fervent Trump supporter and a Second Amendment enthusiast, apparently killed by the Capitol police officer in self-defense, while she tried to break through a barricaded door."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Charles Rammelkamp

UNANSWERED UNASKED QUESTIONS

Getting ready for bed,
I mentioned to my wife
a newspaper story I’d read that day.
The weirdness of the world around us.

“The cops tossed this 82-year old guy,
a former Boy Scout leader,
into an Annapolis jail cell
for taking pictures
of a nine-year old girl.”

“Explicit nude photos?” she demanded,
as if an accusation.

“Paper didn’t say, but I assume so.
The photo clerk at Wal-Mart
tipped the cops off
when he processed the guy’s film.
The pictures were taken
right there in the Wal-Mart parking lot.”

“How’d they know that?”

“Paper didn’t say.
Maybe you could see the storefront
through the van windows
where he shot the pictures.
The guy swore he didn’t think
he’d done anything wrong.”

“What did the pictures show?”

“Paper didn’t say.”
I watched her eyes harden
as the unwanted images
flitted into her imagination
as if on the wings of vampire bats.
I didn’t ask her what she saw.


Charles reads "Unanswered Unasked Questions":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Charles confesses: "I’m always weirded out by stories like these in the newspapers, which are always so “discreet” they only get your imagination going about the salient details. “Some of the language may be disturbing,” the public radio announcer warns, introducing some salacious, racist, crude or creepy story. No shit!"

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A collection of poems about Rasputin and Russia in the 20th century, Catastroika, was published in May by Apprentice House, and another, Ugler Lee, has just been published by Kelsay Books.

Charles Rammelkamp

I GAVE YOU DIAMONDS, YOU GAVE ME DISEASE

As the disease raced through his state
like a wildfire through dry brush,
a stream of gasoline whooshing up in flames,
the brave lieutenant governor of Texas,
a former owner of a failed
string of sports bars,
before he morphed into a conservative
radio talk show host
in the Rush Limbaugh style—
a guy who once painted himself blue
while wearing a big cowboy hat
to support the Houston Oilers—
before they moved to Nashville, became the Tennessee Titans—

(in other words, a real moral icon,
not a selfish privileged prick at all;
just the guy you want in charge
of life and death decisions)

he took a bold stand against sick people;
let the bleeding hearts care
about their shitty little lives.
Dan Patrick declared,
“There are some things more important than living.”


Charles reads "I Gave You Diamonds, You Gave Me Disease":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Charles confesses: "The title of this poem is a line that appears on the album cover of The Rolling Stones’ 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, but is not actually a lyric in any of the songs. This is a metaphor for Lt. Governor Patrick’s empathy, which likewise doesn’t actually appear anywhere, though the disease is all too real."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Me and Sal Paradise, was published last year by FutureCycle Press. Two full-length collections are forthcoming in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books.