August ’58

03/12/2021 0 By BuddyCushman

It’s August 1958 and I’m nine years old. Ginsberg is back from Europe, living lower east side New York, and Ferlinghetti is plunked down in the forests of Big Sur. My dick is getting hard, for the first time ever, once in a while and I dig that. It has dawned on me that, at nine years, digging life is the bomb. (And not the one we crawl under desks from.)

Someone gave my older sister June a typewriter, which she hates, so I’ve claimed it and have it up in a corner in the attic, right in front of the window looks out on Main Street down the hill. I spend afternoons running through backyards up and down my street, and once in a while drink cokes at the counter and look at teenage girls with short skirts at Water’s Drug.

Mostly, honestly, I’m up there at the typewriter.

I think, maybe, I’m a poet.