Joseph Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and
fourteen year old son in the high-up mountains of Vermont.
He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals
both here and abroad, been nominated seven times for The Pushcart Prize,
and his books in poetry and cultural studies include, “If I Told You To Jump
Off The Brooklyn Bridge” (Flutter Press) “A Different Sort Of Distance”
(Skive Magazine Press) “Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life
& Times Of The Man Sawed In Half” (Brick Road Poetry Press)
“Drugstore Sushi” (Thunderclap Press) “The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians”
(Fomite Press) “The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end
of the world” (Fomite Press) “The Hole That Runs Through Utopia” (Fomite Press)
“Connecting The Dots To Shangrila: A Postmodern Cultural Hx Of America” (Fomite
Press) “A Case Study Of Werewolves” (Fomite Press) “Taking The Fifth And Running
With It: a psychological guide for the hard of hearing and blind” (Broadstone Books)
“The Rituals Of Mummification” (Sagging Meniscus Press) “Magritte’s Missing Murals:
Insomniac Episodes” (Sagging Meniscus Press) “The Hospitality Business” (Valeviel Press)
“How To Order Chinese During A Hostage Crisis: Dialects, Existential Essays, A Play,
And Other Poems” (Hog Press) “The American Book Of The Dead” (Xi Draconis Books)
“American Existentialism” (Tuba Press) “From Premonition To Prophecy”
(Delinkwent Scholar Press) “an eccentric urban guide to surviving”
(Analog Submission Press) “Statutes Of David” (Pen & Anvil Press)
“The Trouble With Authority” (Makeshift Press) can check out site, coming soon!
POEMS
Proverbs (or the nature of noir)
:: a pained grin on the dripping soaking milkman
:: the leftover forgotten pretty girls from vaudeville
:: a parasol left in the gutter of a southern belle
:: burlesque dancer with her hourglass figure who instantly
triggers all the businessmen in their plume of smoke to start
howling and feening and seething and drooling like a pack
of pavlov’s dogs (increase their libido and fantasy worlds)
and instantly automatically ameliorates and heals all their
conflicts and problems and helps them to get on with their
miserable menial realities and stagger off drunken on 7 & 7’s
to improve their daily functioning and meet their quotas and dream of
their long-term targeted goal of that quintessential corner office in heaven
:: the sailor in his all-white uniform in the broken bamboo
night will fall in love with strangers; a girl he thinks he
might love, while simultaneously falls out of love with
his mortality and will never ever really quite return home
:: rain falls on the rickshaw
:: we are all absurd strangers in a dark
movie theater obscurely watching our lives
flashing right in front of us on some chaotic screen
:: the combustive, churning wheels of the train
exact same as the built-up collapsible waves
:: idiotic strangers brooding, worrying having a difficult
time making the distinction between work and play
:: our childhood was like some brilliant keen
surreal freakshow of a haunted holy life of leisure
:: when we get older we slow dance
in the stirring echoes of a conch shell
:: naked incestuous cousins eavesdropping
like kettles seething through the keyhole
:: through the rainy portholes they lift
the blinds to the sunny deck of the
splendid cruise ship on the ocean
:: dreams are the isolated imagistic division
of visions and the exact dynamic as well as
opposite deconstruction of the imagination
leaving one to question deep down the
meaning and purpose of their existence
:: i love for the most part how trains and buses
just creep through the deep dark haunted evening
and then suddenly just show up like some saintly dream
coming out a nightmare in the milky dawn, bleary-eyed, reborn
:: i love when they spoon you
forks & knives not included
:: we fall in love with noir because we are just barely hanging on
and all those things in life which just always seem to elude us
while it appears as well to touch on our everyday existence of
brooding, perseverating, and even situational depression, and in
reality we all suffer and are all so alone, isolated, distant, engaged
in that lone journey of ‘quiet desperation,’ not too dissimilar to
the nature of gangster films which always seems to contain an element
of poetic justice, as deep down inside (can never accomplish in real life
because of societal norms or what freud alludes to in his “civilization and
its discontents” as primal, animalistic urges that get repressed) and those who
sincerely deserve it, as well as asking for it, and symbolic and representative
even cathartic of people in our reality and past experiences who should have
just been ‘ended.’ the same holds true with westerns and that instant medium
and connection with escapism, while in essence (when we break through all
our “role playing”) are so impulsive and primitive, searching for that deep
down rare justice which for the most part contains an element of violence
:: a well-made western helps one to get to bed
cause simply deals with the living and the dead
devoid of all those little things in between
which has a tendency to confuse and
bring about a certain amount of dread
:: it seems like in all of those ole time black & white
hollywood films they were having a damn good time
(actually had clever quips) like the first exhibitionists
(what i had heard too were pretty wild & promiscuous)
:: politics involves a certain amount of addiction
:: the vietnamese and portuguese fisher-
men return for their bundle of heroin
:: the fortune cookie reads–
rock & roll does not exist anymore
:: it’s not so much that you care that they steal from you
(as have simply gotten used to) it’s the trigger to that
violation and original betrayal of trust and truth
:: do we ever really recover from the open
wounds of betrayal or just become a bit more
calloused, cautious looking out for the deal of devils?
:: dogs prove to be man’s best friend
(with their protective look of sympathy
and compassion) during thick and thin
:: those true-blue troubled youth were spiritually neglected
and abused way before any of those clinical conclusions
:: nothing equals the power of a child’s imagination
almost making a spiritual connection with the
transcendent gods and spirits around them
:: it is true those liberals can be mean, alienating, and cruel too
because believe (ironically are looking for something to believe
in too) you don’t fit into their very strict and narrow specific traits
and characteristics and overall prerequisite imagined description
or live up to what they delusionally conclude in their insular
and exclusive often privileged elitist definition to be virtue
:: often those who don’t get your sense of humor
turn paranoid, defensive, and hostile while ironically you
were coming from a place of mad spirit and kindness and compassion
:: when you deconstruct and break down language
often it runs parallel and consistent with the
contradictions of human nature and behavior
:: women know their exact influence over men
:: an instant panacea to all the bullshit of existence…
The True-Blue Sisyphus
Wife told me there are really cool headphones
these days and I should go out and get a pair
completely unaware I preferred the good ole
days when I couldn’t afford to be cosmopolitan
and chic and used to have to scotch tape the batteries
into the back of my walkman keeping it all in, practically
holding it all together all the way out to the last final
stop in Coney Island of my poverty-stricken wild
ramshackle existence when the last of the drunken
hungover lights of The Wonder Wheel were fading
and draining from the desperate evening sifting in
to a bleak desolate sun rising blaring blinding me
through the windows of the subway finding myself
experiencing and making a difference in my long-lost
ridiculous anonymous reality; my only true-blue com-
panions the blind men and stray dogs and wild sqwauk
of seagulls leading me to my lonely linoleum hovel at
the end of the boardwalk not knowing a living breathing
soul except for the Ultra-Orthodox Jews in their Abraham
Lincoln top hats and Charlie Chaplin rags barely able to
keep up with my rent after a full night of hustling a grave-
yard yellow cab too tough and mad to be scared of any man
as they all just seemed see-through and pussy and obscene
getting used to sleeping all day then heading later in the day
bleary-eyed baked back to the trains all the way to the end
of the world 11th avenue Hell’s Kitchen to slip a 10 under
the partition (a mandated custom and tradition) to grease
the sleazy mafia dispatchers just to rent a taxi for the mad
summer evening to pay my token $125 for this ‘Myth
of Sisyphus’ slave existence only to be able to afford
to pay my rent for the last home at the end of the world
and pick up a quart of Ballantine and the paper to find
out what happened to The Yankees the night before.
Bruce Lee
Wow, I guess I really am like every other freaking guy
when I got nothing else to talk about, how I always rely
and fall back on Bruce Lee when I got alcoholics in my
kitchen without pigment in their skin because of all the
drugs they claim they are no longer doing, and if not
casing the joint to steal your wife’s wedding ring along
with bonds they cannot exchange and other memories
know in the middle of the job of course are going to
break their agreement (and everything they swore
on most likely based on their chemical dependency)
and are going to ask for half of their pay and claim
they have earned it after ridiculously dropping every
can of paint and literally every nut bolt and tchotchke
and every glass animal in the glass animal collection
and of course consistently like every last one of
them because they never learned to listen and
ironically the exact reason why they’re in the
condition that they’re in when told them please
if had any questions to feel free to come on
in, but they have too much pride and passive
aggressive and resent the position that they’re
in (are too much men) and paint everything
you didn’t ask them and have to send my wife
the angel that she is back into town to pick up
a whole other gallon and want to get paid extra
for the time they put in; I swear ain’t making
any of this up (I guess minus what we have to
spend to pick up a whole other gallon of paint
and gallons for the gas and a gallon for our time
and patience) so I guess I just always fall back
on Bruce Lee for all the blatant reasons and most
necessary and desperate subconscious of meaning
of just wanting to murder every last single one of them
and tell them how he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him
and clearly the quickest reflexes, and no one ever defeated
him even when they all in real life jumped from dark alleys
to try and challenge him, and was just trying to get on
in his everyday existence from these ignorant stubborn
murdering madmen who were trying to do him in and
when they pick up their drop cloths all of course for
effect and hand you their cards as if to suggest if
we should ever happen to know anyone please
don’t ever hesitate to think about them…
Somewhere In The Early Seventies
There wasn’t anything wrong with every Friday
night as a kid watching The Brady Bunch
and then The Partridge Family.
There wasn’t anything wrong a little later on
watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island
whose purpose was to teach us a ridiculous
life lesson and eventually
provide us hope
for the future
where
the climax
and resolved conflict
was all narrated
by Meryl Steubing
and Ricardo Montalban.
Somewhere in between was
The Mod Squad and Charlie’s Angels
not exactly sure what that had to do with anything
lying back in that little patch of backyard in the suburbs
with our thick movie star sunglasses on and large
menu of tin foil wide open in front of our faces
to make us look more slick and sophisticated
for sweet 16’s and bar-mitzvahs
and summer camp reunions
taboo to talk about those pretty rich cousins
who had turned into junkies and spoiled
daughters next door you grew up with
(there always felt something
so incestuous about it or more
so just intimate and affectionate)
who you always thought so gorgeous
with their ability to be color-coordinated
and match their sky-blue evening gowns
with sky-blue eye shadow
their suntans and bright
white high heels…
whose parents bought them
a condo in The Upper East Side
and still couldn’t get away from
all the drama; from still doing bong hits
or gigolos who they thought they had fallen in
love with and ended swindling them for all their savings
like Mets games that went on forever
and knew they’d always find
a way of blowing it…
Convent
I remember reading one of Nietzsche’s
recently discovered unknown writings
going over of course that theme about
living in a world without God on some
park bench outside one of those high
rise projects in Harlem and it was
for the most part on a fine chilly
autumn morning with dappled
colored leaves gathered on the asphalt
and it was my job to check on and deliver
a monthly social security check to this fine
kind older black woman in her simple and spare
apartment with only a couple pictures on the wall
and was so softspoken and grateful and looking back
at those few moments i used to spend with her when
i used to do home visits maybe perhaps that’s just what
this existence is all about as without a doubt meant the world.