By Michael Colbert

Sheets too hot
cold
switch sides
back
pillow flip
try jacking off
nothing puts me back to sleep.
One AM it’s just me
the dog
and George Forman.
Look how this pillow flattens
in the Food Saver.
Hear George Forman talk
lean mean fat grilling machines
I thought he was famous
for foot grills, not boxing
and outside someone sold the sky
a wooden bowl to use as the moon
you know the type. I’d shuffle
Teddy Grahams in those shallow
salad bowls at my grandmother’s
during Wheel & Jeopardy
My sister loved infomercials best.
Here’s a gadget for any problem
Flip channels. Skip laugh tracks.
Vacuum seal leftovers for your life alone.
Maybe there’s something for these late nights
Maybe I just need a boyfriend
pillow to spoon me back to bed

By Ken Norris

It’s an adult movie
portraying adult situations.

You know how it is —
a young girl
living with her sister and brother–in–law
falls in love with a married man.

We all understand.

And the test of character
is coming to understand
why suffering exists in this world.

And going for the Seconal.

And then there’s Baxter,
blithely explaining
how he almost blew his brains out
because he was in love
with a married woman.

I was there once,
on the lip of the crease,
trying to get right
with the moral universe.

We all understand.

How the dream of love
can twist you up inside
until you can’t recognize yourself,

and desperation sets in,
and you take the wrong path,
until the moment you see
there’s something better,
and you go for it,
as any adult would do.

By Ken Norris

The early morning darkness enfolds. In the next room
they’re discussing plans to secure the Maltese Falcon.
When dawn comes Effie will be here with the black bird
wrapped in newspaper.

Does the ship sail
from Honolulu? I can’t remember, but think so.
Dead captains litter our lives.

I was always on the verge
of something important. Things were always going to change
in big ways. The song would deliver, the poem
would change the way we see flower petals falling
forever.

Loneliness puts its arm around us
all. You in your lonely room and I in mine.
And the world changed itself. It went on
without us, in spite of us, to spite us
in our pride.

The black bird arrives
and I’m outside of the story. It’s a fake.
Cairo and the Fat Man take a hike. Wilmer
takes the fall, Spade pushes Bridget over the falls.
A man has got to do something, in the face of a dead partner,
in the realm of fading dreams.
When dawn comes.

By Kevin Sweeney

I now think Jack Nicholson telling Tom Cruise
he couldn’t handle the truth in A Few Good Men
was similar to George C. Scott telling Paul Newman
he didn’t lose to Jackie Gleason in The Hustler
because he drank too much during long hours of
straight pool but that he didn’t know how to win.

I wonder if Tom Cruise, maybe a method actor,
pretended Jack’s accusatory comment referred to
Ellen Hurley from Glen Ridge NJ who turned down
Tom’s request to go to the prom before he was a
scientologist. Had Paul Newman’s Fast Eddie Felson
been a scientologist he wouldn’t have gone to this
one pool room where he got badly injured. Maybe if

he’d hung out at Chiefs Pool Room in the Monongahela
Valley where young guys would pay Johnny Onions to
pick up 6–packs at Sepesy’s. Johnny would require
a dime for the game of 8 ball he’d just won, a fee for
this illegal favor, then perhaps exit the back door of
Sepesy’s and keep the money. Certainly a truth

not easy to handle but a practical lesson for under–age
drinkers who’d one day see Jack Nicholson on TV,
courtside at Lakers games, flaunting more wealth than
the pittance they’d given Johnny Onions. It was time
to not be a loser but be Paul Newman as Fast Eddie
playing Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats a second time

and WINNING. Soon Paul would be the world’s most
handsome man then create pizzas and morning tea to
support social justice. I probably won’t ever watch
The Hustler again as I hated the sound of Paul screaming
when bad guys from Lawless America broke his thumbs.

Although Paul was about to die when he and Robert Redford
charged the Bolivian army as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, they were both still–life alive when that movie ended.
Only we, the audience, would have to handle the truth
and try whenever possible not to lose.