Clean Living - Nicholas Grider

Clean Living.

Is it possible to maintain a childhood drunken
in public? On wheels, a bridesmaid
to the radio’s night time relief. A 1987
way of believing. The years pressed
together under neon lights

That sad yelp in the distance has a name, and at home
a sad wife. Friday Night
hunting
for a new language, any language is necessarily
a hard angle. Turned. The way the world works

Tapped on the forehead, pushed
around in the park. Springtime of exigency, the
shelves
are empty, the leaves of the grooms turned.

Nicholas Grider holds an MA in Mass Communication fromthe University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is currentlyan interschool art/writing MFA student at theCalifornia Insitute of the Arts. His work has beenpublished in or is forthcoming from nthposition,
42opus, Ampersand, and Trepan.