Poetry: jerry lee hits by John Yamrus

jerry lee hits

the 

first one 

smack in the middle 

 

of 

the face 

 

and 

throws 

the money 

down on the floor 

and the fight is on and 

 

it’s 

like that fight 

in the beginning of Ellison’s Invisible Man,

 

only 

there’s a lot 

less at stake and 

 

it’s 

a whole 

lot more fun.  

 

that’s why 

he threw the five on the floor...

 

to 

make 

them scramble 

 

and distract them a bit 

 

and,

no matter what, 

they’d never find that 20 

 

he had 

in his sock.

 

he 

looked like hell.  

 

his 

nose 

was broke.

 

his 

lip was split 

 

and 

he might 

have bit thru 

a part of his tongue, 

 

but, 

god-damn, 

this was fun, and 

 

nobody 

in the world 

was gonna tell him it wasn’t.

John Yamrus, in a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, has published 39 books. He has also had more than 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A number of his books and poems are taught in college and university courses. He is widely considered to be a master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. His two most recent books are the memoir THE STREET and a volume of poetry called PEOPLE (AND OTHER BAD IDEAS).