American Sonnet
We had a neighborhood dog named Tiger & a krazy
kat called Kramps
We had parents who swore they loved us beyond what
boys & girls could know
We had plenty of free time to hang ourselves if we
could find some rope
& the rope wouldn’t break
We had too much of this & too little of that & had
had just about enough
We had holes in our sox & holes in our shoes with
Sunday bulletins to keep out the water
We had pool cues & knives & guns & homemade wine
outta Welch’s grape juice & Fleischmann’s yeast
that nearly killed us with headaches &
cigarettes galore
We had accusations thrown at us concerning episodes
of violence theft & vandalism
We had our own children to raise unknown to us in
dubious afflicted futures
We had stacks & stacks of baseball cards that grew
to be worth their weight in air
We had boyfriends & girlfriends & hard-ons &
creamin’ & plenty of anywhere sex
with anyone will do
We had trophies & letter jackets broken ankles
concussions & lots of black eyes
and a war to look forward to
We had Salinger & Steinbeck Orwell & Shakespeare
to hint at some truth & jobs after skool
We had loves someday, loves that would never help &
would never last & would never end
We had wicked mouthfuls of fuck-a-bunch o’ rules
& all that we had, we had, & it was everything
Patric Pepper has published three poetry chapbooks and one full length collection. He is a
founding editor of a micro-press, Pond Road Press, which has published 13 books and chapbooks
combined to date. His work has appeared most recently in Backbone Mountain Review,
Bourgeon, Feral, The Northern Virginia Review and Sport Literate. Pepper lives on Cape Cod in
North Truro, Massachusetts.