Consult at the 8th Street Clinic

for Jack Ridl

“Doc, here’s my dizzy symptom:
I’m buying these skinny books
like they’re jazz CD’s—
rackin’ ‘em up on the changer,
five at a time, punchin’ in
‘All Disks’ and ‘Shuffle,’
diggin’ whatever cut comes
improv’d out of the whirl—
one long, mad, wild whirl:
StaffordGinsbergRidlCollinsOliver!

“Hell, even the names’ll jazz a mind
that once wandered
that ol’ square-ass landscape of meaning.

“Damn!  So,
whadoIgot?”

“Poems, man….
Poems.”

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D. R. James

D. R. James’s latest of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage