April 8, 2016
Kevin Ridgeway I dialed the same phone number listed in the white pages when I was a kid, the same one that I used as an adult and needed to get bailed out of my usual cross country trouble. We had just emptied the house and put it on the market, but she still answered in that same old teaser of an answering machine message, sorry we're not here but leave your name, number and we'll get back to you, okay? The first time I'd heard her voice since she died. I whispered her a happy birthday and began the rest of a life filled by her echoes against the walls of my mind as it listens to her endless silence. Cheeseburger Pinup Kevin Ridgeway she stood there clutching a sandwich from the health food portion of a popular fast food joint wearing nothing but glorified underwear and a beauty queen crown, ketchup marking her lipstick and nearly bare breasts that convinced me to purchase three veggie burgers that my body was unable to digest with the hope that I could win a date with this woman I had never met, whose life size image stood half naked beside the ketchup dispenser, tempting lonely men who dined in the shadows of the Kidz Zone playground, one of which stole her from the restaurant before the contest was over so he could date her forever, but she was returned from her captivity with her arms duct taped into place, and we kept up with our super sized daydreams of her while she smiled faintly at all of us underneath dreary fluorescent lights showing us dining in the closing time darkness of the suburbia we all escaped from with her pasties made of two all beef patties, melting us into her own demented recipe of special sauce. |
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About the Author: Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Southern California. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, his work has most recently appeared in the pages of Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Spillway, BIG HAMMER, Cultural Weekly, Lummox, RCC Muse, Dryland Lit and The Mas Tequila Review, among others. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, including On the Burning Shore (2014, Arroyo Seco Press) and Contents Under Pressure (2015, Crisis Chronicles Press).