Kevin Ridgeway

One-Armed Poem

He stands in front of you
in line at the supermarket,
slowly bagging Jack Daniels
& Marlboro Reds
at seven in the morning
with one arm, the other one
missing.  The cashier waits
for you to pay for your coffee,
but you’re still waiting for
the one-armed man to
finish bagging his items.
He thanks you for your
patience, having to do
everything with one arm
is hard & you simply
tell him you can’t imagine
before he disappears
like his arm did before him,
leaving you to wake up
& realize you haven’t
lost a damn thing yet. 

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and Invasion of the Shadow People (forthcoming, Luchador Press, 2022). His work has appeared in Slipstream, Chiron Review. Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, The Cape Rock, Plainsongs, Into the Void, Book of Matches, Cultural Daily and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.