Wicked Hard
David R. Surette
Koenisha Publications
ISBN: 987-0-9800098-8-0
2013
“armed with the light
fixture suspended from its wire,
I tried to burn my brother with the bulb
as he swung by standing on the doorknobs
it burst into blue flame, a pop,..”
Surette's poetry is crisp, terse and humorous, with great respect, the poet uses experience to inform the poems. His childhood and growing years explain our own roots within that same self absorbed world. “She walked out of the bathhouse, we turned to see.” As the reader turns the pages, each poem finely crafted, sparks our imagination and curiosity:
“...first gig drive from Malden to Boston seems endless.
I hit the curb turning West to Medford Street,
change the tire in pit stop time.
No Exit, boys Life, Unnatural Axe & Lapeste,
The bass player's mother said he couldn't go.
He snuck out.
It would be his only show.
The set's over in a blink.
The ride home takes seconds...”
His poems are just like that, the unspeakable, last chance to play, song. We encounter all the emotions of maturing; lust, greed, recognition and death. And more than that all the poems are about love:
“...Except those who stayed
behind, gravely wounded by
failure and doubt,
the curse of being
different and not
different enough,
having no meds
or not the right dose,
or dosing themselves,
broken-hearted and
sadder than they should be,
hair's horn or a
curtain across the eyes,
their deaths called sudden,
their wakes swollen
as only a teenager's can be.”
Wicked Hard blankets our age and our cool realities. The poems do not resist reality, instead, they encounter situations that maybe familiar and veiled with unfamiliar. The reader is warmed by their directness. Each word contains its own full meaning and manages to reach us. We realize we are privy to the poets' experiences but also we realize it is the humanness of the poems that help us relate:
“...I knew I'd never see him again.
I should have asked
why we never were friends.”
Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor:
Wilderness House Literary Review
Reviewer:
Boston small Press & Poetry Scene
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