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"i guess you'd call it love..." by Joseph D. Reich



after working like one of those

first social work jobs after having

just got married head over heels

madly in love on school st. in newport

rhode island spending the whole day

driving back & forth over that long

narragansett bay bridge to the boys

group homes & shelters in providence

due to kids pretty much being abused

& neglected, deserted & abandoned

& when the day at last is finally over

that blinding sun in bumpadabumpa

lowers its dome & sluggishly head

back home where i feel from a sixth

sense experience previous existence

someone on my shoulder eventually

getting ticketed & taken off the road

by this rookie cop boasting how he's

been following me since the highway

as if he was so proud of himself &

some kind of hero (you wondering

who's the real criminal) having no

idea how you've been working all

day with hurt kids trying to hurt

themselves & others until i now

have to absurdly cautiously paranoid

exhausted watch my back & return

back home down that dark gravely

country road where my new young

lovely wife is just waiting for me

with the light on in the kitchen

having had made me supper

expressing how worried &

concerned she was & kept

it warm & what went wrong

as took me so long & blood

shot down on my luck just

sick of it all didn't even know

where to begin as just like

those battered kids feeling

numb dumb all over simply

knowing it just never ends.




Joseph D. Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and teenage 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 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)

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