Charles Rammelkamp – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 12/13/23

December 13, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Schnuckiputzi

When I called my girlfriend
by the German endearment
I had just learned –
Sweetie pie – she slapped my face,
accused me of being a perv.

Trivia Bliss

In the daily multiple-choice trivia quiz
about the singer of “I’m Lovin’ It,”
the McDonald’s jingle,
nearly fifty percent guessed Barry Manilow,
though the correct answer was Justin Timberlake –
the guy who dated Britney Spears.
Smug, I’d guessed the correct answer.
Maybe I had a future on Jeopardy!

I thought I knew everything
there was to know about the Beatles,
and then I read on the internet
John Lennon’s first childhood cat was named Elvis.
Lennon loved cats, the itemoid said,
and I love Lennon more for that.

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. His poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2020 by Clare Songbirds Publishing House.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/27/23

September 27, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Climbing

“…scheming after the big score that would deliver them to middle management.”
– Colson Whitehead, Crime Manifesto

“They call themselves ‘systems analysts’ but they’re just the usual gang of egghead white guys who want to run shit.”
–Colson Whitehead, Crime Manifesto

So many of these dudes aspired to team leader,
then branch chief, then division director
and finally a commissioner in the Big Office
on the eighth floor, big desk, office windows.

Oh, to be as unselfconscious as a dog,
lifting its leg against a tree.

Retirement evened us all out,
except it didn’t.

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/31/23

May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Sticking It to the Man

“This thing couldn’t have fallen apart faster if you’d bought it at Ikea.”
– Mick Herron, Slow Horses

An intransitive verb meaning an act
of civil disobedience to protest
the capitalist establishment:
Chris, Ken and I decided
to “stick it to the man.”
Also, poor college students,
we could use the extra dollar
for more worthwhile purposes.

Not that it was a “plan,”
more like a spur-of-the-moment decision:
having drunk our cups of weak coffee
in the booth at Lum’s,
high on the joints we’d smoked earlier,
the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man”
coming tinnily out of the jukebox,
we walked out into the winter night
without paying for our purchase,
bold as banditos, feeling righteous,
a blow against the oppressors.

A block away, having already forgotten our deed,
the manager surprised us, his own righteousness
seething like a steaming coffee urn,
suddenly looming into view,
blocking our path, threatening to call the cops.

Above all we didn’t want to cave,
but we’d been busted, for sure,
mumbled something about temporary forgetfulness,
handed over the cash,
trying to tell ourselves
we hadn’t done something stupid.
We were just the oppressed proletariat.

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 12/14/22

December 15, 2022 James D. Casey IV

A Whole Nother Experience

As if having sex, regularly and often,
weren’t already a new, unfamiliar sensation –
against the gymnasium wall at midnight,
in the stairwell of Josie’s dorm,
in the seats of the movie theater,
she in my lap as we both faced the screen
watching Last Tango in Paris,
in the stacks at the library, the lounge,
under the elm trees on the quad,
in beds, cars, parks, swimming pools –
when my girlfriend invited me to spend
the Thanksgiving holiday with her family
in rural North Dakota, she warned:
“It’ll be a whole nother experience.”

A girlfriend! Never before going to college
had I paired off in such intimacy
with another person, sharing secrets, plans,
enjoying the sheer physical reality of it.
Always it had been a hunt, a furtive one-night deal,
an oasis in the desert, but when I met Josie
at a mixer the start of sophomore year –
coup de foudre! Love at first sight! –
we were inseparable as two chemicals
swirled together in a beaker in a lab.

When we land in Bismarck, from Chicago,
her dad picks us up at the airport,
hugs Josie, shakes my hand;
we climb into the Buick.

“Your mother’s going to die when she sees
the guy who’s sticking his cock in your mouth,”
Dale comments out of the corner of his mouth
to his daughter in the backseat
as we drive west on 94 toward Killdeer,
as if I weren’t even there.

“Oh, Daddy!” Josie admonishes,
as if he’s just said something a little foolish.

Did he just say what I think he said?
I expect an explosion, war to break out,
tears, shouting, recriminations, violence,
but when that doesn’t happen,
just the car scrolling west into the fading sun,

all at once, I wonder:
Why will her mother die?

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. Also, a poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/12/22

September 12, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Andrew Jackson’s Parrot

The daily trivia quiz asked
about the vulgar pet parrot
that disrupted the funeral of a president,
with a list of four to choose from –
Jackson, Truman, Roosevelt, Washington;
Andrew Jackson the obvious answer.

The former president buried at The Hermitage,
his Nashville mansion, Jackson’s bird Poll swore like a sailor,
repeating words it had obviously learned from its owner.
Guests at the somber occasion aghast,
disturbed, horrified; the bird removed.
What had it said?

No record of what it actually said exists, of course,
but I like to think, it squawked,
“You murderous fucking piece of shit!
I hope you rot in hell for the cruelty
of your shitty ‘Trail of Tears,’
the suffering you caused,
you motherfucking prick.
I hope every Creek and Seminole
you encounter in the Afterlife
shits and pisses all over
your cocksucking worthless soul.
The ‘Indian Removal Act’ should be shoved up
your useless asshole every fucking second throughout eternity,
and I hope it hurts like hell.”

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. Also, a poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.