Place Beyond the Pines
Out near county’s end, near suburban
development sprawl, where low-level,
predicate offenders, scumbag drunks and
nickel bag users, are taken on slow,
after-midnight shifts, stripped of clothes,
shoes, coats and beaten; left bleeding
amid dead fall and slush. Sometimes
they recover and sometimes they do not.
Become bodies found months later by lost hikers,
barely recognizable as human after months
under snow and ice, fed upon by wild animals,
insects and birds. All these unsolved deaths
by misadventure, serial solutions to epidemic,
to street problems, on soon-to-be-rezoned
commercial land, formerly scared grounds, where
The League of Indian Nations once roamed.
Alan Catlin is to small press publishing as old man river is to folk songs; been around and he keeps rolling along. He latest full length book from Lummox Press, Last Man Standing, is another glimpse into our alien nation at night in bars.