Catherine Rankovic to Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, February 28

Catherine Rankovic will be one of the featured readers at the next reading Monday, February 28, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid. The other featured readers are Steven Schroeder and Bob Reuter. Musical guest will be William Kyle. Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Doors open at 7:30; cover is $3.00.

Catherine Rankovic was formerly a full-time newspaper reporter and magazine editor, and has taught creative writing at Washington University since 1989 and developed a following as an independent editor. She says, "I've written and published four books, most recently, Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis (2010), and have worked with large and small publishers. Awards include the Missouri Biennial Award, an Academy of American Poets award, and first place in the 2009 Midwest Writers Center poetry competition. I have been honored to be a judge for many literary contests. My poems and essays have appeared in Boulevard, Gulf Coast, the Iowa Review, the Missouri Review, River Styx, Delmar, Umbrella, many newspapers and magazines, and several anthologies including Flood Stage (2010) and Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America (2008)."

You Weren’t There

You weren’t there when I killed ’em in Vegas
with my “open the door Richard damn you or kiss
my white booty” routine. You were – I dunno – drinking
Boone’s Farm Strawberry with some easy nonthinking
airhead underage blonde while I was up for
the Grammy for best comedy record of the year,

nineteen-seventy-nine, I believe, and only Richard
Pryor had released a better album: Was It Something I Said?
In nineteen-eighty I recorded a underground hit
with Marianne Faithfull; that’s me on the drum kit,
you didn’t know? My mentor Ringo, I call him Rich,
taught me at Apple and told me what a bitch

Paul laying down the drum tracks on Let It Be
had been. I engineered his cover of “Act Naturally”
and produced it, and where were you, dickhead,
when at twenty-three I was already a celebrated
ghostwriter for Norman Mailer, and had a cameo
in a Woody Allen movie; you didn’t see it, I know,

too busy tripping on Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum
with fellow burnouts, dousing your buzzard breath with gum
so your parents wouldn’t kick your pitiful natural rear.
While I was toasted as the Little Richard of literature
and modeling Guess, you, fool, were choking your chick-
en, and when I was in a limo refusing to partner with Mick,

because I was busy buying stocks with MacArthur
grants, and reviving Keith Richards with a fire extinguisher
every other day in palaces and Learjets,
your TV showed you me, through your haze of pot and Cheezits,
and now through a haze of video games and Internet porn
you send an E-card with regards and regrets. Get born,
                                                                                                jackass.

-- Catherine Rankovic