Contact The Author: rdlbarton@gmail.com

Ron. Lavalette's work has appeared in these fine publications:



Thursday, July 31, 2014

Seeing Margot

Deep Water Literary Journal (Online) August 2014


I see Margot two or three times a month,
tell her about my fear of being hunted,

being rounded up for running out of pills
in the middle of the night. Mostly, she

waits patiently while I caress my lies or
opt, instead, to spend my time describing

the things I find lying on the frozen lawn.
Sometimes when we talk I think about how

I left the other doctor high and dry, owing
him thousands of dollars, and I remember

saying goodbye to Trudy back on the ward,
watching me go and asking if I'd gotten the cure.

Yesterday I let my watch read 11:50 all day long.
Late in the morning, something like snow came

spitting down, overwhelming my wipers.
Crossing Main near midnight, I saw Margot

through the windshield. I wanted to get out
and tell her that I've lived before, tell her

that the exterminators are coming around
to gather us up, that I need to see her now

for an hour or so, need to have some coffee,
need to get and take my pills, go home,

scrape the baby off the frozen grass.

Friday, July 11, 2014


Clapboard House (3 Pieces)
(Online) July 2014
 
 
 
Danny B. initials the dust
of the librarys basement window
makes his mark inside a heart with
his favorite girlfriends initials, pierces
 
his full and dusty heart with an arrow,
with angled feathers and a very serious
point; and despite all the books and
periodicals the institution offers, nothing
 
means more than these four letters
because Danny knows that tonight
after the slow dance, walking her home
in the dark under the feeble streetlight
 
he can stop and point to the window,
point to his dusty handiwork and hope
she overlooks the crack in the glass
and the fact that several other windows
 
all bear similar artifacts: his name
in dust in identically shafted hearts,
 
and his former girlfriends initials.
 
The girls not blind, she sees it all
 
but doesnt care; she doesnt care
the windows cracked, doesnt care
that half a quivers love is spent
on half a dozen other dusty panes.
 
She lets him make a pass, lets him
kiss her under the blazing streetlight,
and when the dust has settled she
goes back home, cracks a notebook,
 
fills a dozen empty pages with
Mrs Dan, Mrs Daniel, Mrs Danny B.

     
Grace

Thank you, father, for all that hash when I was
just a high schoolboy;  and for all those girls,
their cute little pink feet and silver toe rings
up on the dashboard, Stones on the radio,
calico dresses in the wind, tanned legs, hot
nights, warm flesh, and all those summer
sunstruck mornings waking up with no idea
whose house I was in, whose bed,
and not a seconds thought about how its
only Tuesday, smoky and unknowable.
Thanks for the moon reflected in windshield
raindrops, and for midnight mushrooms,
Day-Glo under blacklight, mescaline boogie,
acid rock,  and acid.  But mostly thank you
for 68: Danny Riley and his floral necktie
finishing up his student teaching,
smiling and handing me books, saying
Oh man, you should read some Ginsberg, or 
Brautigan, maybe.  No; here, I got it.
For you, Ferlinghetti.

     
Wrong Hands

He doesnt know how he let his hands
do the things his hands had done:
casually thrown away a wedding ring,
made a fist and used it, ransacked a
complete strangers home, plunged
a needle, pulled a trigger.
                                        Its like they
were someone elses hands; like theyd
never opened a book, never taken an
oath, never tucked a little girl into bed,
or stroked her hair.
                              Now, everything
had slipped away from him, left him
predictably alone, completely
empty-handed.

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Haiku Stupid

High Coupe (Online) June 2014
Subsequently Anthologized: Storm Cycle (Kind Of A Hurricane Press) August 2015


1.

sixteen chickens cross
I curse the road for its width
stupid slowpoke birds

 
2.

they roll themselves down
stupid Pakistani socks
blame it on wal-mart

 
3.

stupid galaxy
we have nowhere else to go
stay home in the pits

 
4.

deadly golden arch
America malnourished
stupid plastic food

 
5.

turn the damned thing off
stupid reality shows
big ol’ bunch of dopes