Five Finger Discount
Nasty Jack was a greaseball biker
from near the Mexican border, he
got his name from his Levis being
so stiff, he could stand them up in
the corner awaiting his reentrance
He was always working on Indians
and Harley Davidsons, occasionally
he applied his magic to four wheel ve-
hicles, but he preferred the freedom
of riding in the wind, unless he was
Pulling a big shoplifting job requiring
a crew to cart away the stolen goodies,
his hands were invisible fast, I worked
with him a few times as a distraction
man or driver, Jack knew no fear
I’d entered stores with him and never
seen anything, outside he’d unload
eight huge Porterhouse steaks, three
bottles of Heinz 57 and he’d grab a
rack of fifty packs of Marlboros
Situated right in front of the checker,
he once walked away with two dollies
of booze, one had nine cases of Corona
and the other had top shelf tequila and gin
We never knew what Jack would show
up with next, but he never came home
empty-handed, he wrote a note goodbye and
said forget about being thieves, he was going
fishing at Boca Chica where the Rio Grande
flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.
Fred & Georgia
Fred was a 59
headbanger always listening
to Led Zep with his vintage walkman
& saying NO! when nodding
He ate fried chicken through
a straw, drank cocaine, &
snorted whiskey & champagne
nobody squeezed his lemons
One day he ran into Georgia who
was 24 & fan of Bob Marley & sang No Woman
No Cry at the top of her lungs
completely out of tune
Fred loaded a Meerschaum with
dynamite skunk weed they soon
got naked and watched the egg yolk
sun disappear into the purple black
Nine months later Georgia
gave birth to a rhinoctopus
they called Ringo Jupiter &
Fred danced like James Brown.
Quicksand
Jose’s amigos arrived from Austin
in a new 4-cylinder Mustang, they
said it had no pep, they asked him
to destroy it for the insurance money
They harvested 20 lbs of psilocybin
mushrooms, covered them with honey,
froze them, and transported them in an
ice chest, 10 lbs were Jose’s if he did
The car, he wanted to strip it and sell it,
but they insisted he blow it up and burn it
he drove out to a caliche pit followed by
his lady and soaked the Mustang in gas and
torched it, later he called the cops
He tried the mushrooms before selling
any, they were strong, sort of like good
acid, but they made him laugh for hours,
Jose decided to go see Iron Butterfly
With a quart of Coors he ate some ‘shrooms,
parking his short a few blocks away, the
hallucinations slowed him into snail turtle
motion, his stomach was grizzly growling
Seeing a dark backyard, he dropped a load
and a rat dog kept barking so he used it for
ass wipe, he gazed up at the brilliant sky
It started raining whores and tequila, he felt
thirsty and stiffer than petrified wood, he led
three senoritas to his car and got a bucket to
catch some cactus juice in, looking in the
back seat he saw the stinky little dog
Jose figured he had been adopted, he asked
“What’s your name boy?” The dog replied,
“Quicksand, motherfucker and I need a bath.”
Bio: Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. His best readings were in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy "the Ghost of Hendrix" Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Main St. Rag, Café Review, Chiron Review, Zen Tattoo, Wormwood Review, Great Weather For Media, Silver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, and 2014, he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. He was in the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ. Press, and New Coinfrom Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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