Nirvana Haymaker
Frank Reardon
About the Author
Frank Reardon was born in 1974 in Boston, Massachusetts and spent his first 28 years living there. Since then, he has lived all over the country, in places such as Alabama, Kansas City and Rhode Island. He currently lives in the Badlands of North Dakota, still looking for a way to get out. Frank has been published in various reviews, journals and online zines. His first book, Interstate Chokehold, was published by NeoPoiesis Press in 2009.
"Read Frank Reardon at your own risk. He'll open your heart with a corkscrew and leave you wide-eyed and longing for more...these are goddamed excellent poems."
—Dan Fante, author of Chump Change, Kissed By a Fat Waitress and Mooch
ISBN 978-0-9855577-7-5
180 pages
$16.95
5.5" x 8.5" perfect bound, paper
Excerpts
Perryton, Texas
Humanity first appeared
to me at 8 years old,
sitting in a chair outside
my father's hotel room
in Perryton, Texas.
i was using my first
pocket knife,
carving away, violently,
at a piece of wood
that i had found
on the ground.
i looked to the left of me,
silence & oaks,
to my right,
a Mexican woman
cleaning a hotel room
& down on my lap,
i noticed that i had
sliced open my hand,
& strangely enough
it did not hurt.
This new puddle of blood,
red & isolated
by my flesh,
fell in love with exile.
Breaking Through Oak
Grandpa stood on the edge of the lawn,
looking up at the large oak in our backyard.
Still in his greasy work shirt, Dickies,
& broken leather shoes,
he had one beer by his side, tucked neatly into his hand,
slightly ready to fall from the day's sweat.
He looked older than the week before,
his blue eyes squinting from behind his glasses,
his face had grown agony's tired stubble,
& he would not motion nor speak to me.
The hair tonic had lost its power over his gray hair,
moving it around in small fights with the wind,
while he stood there letting his cigar smoke
take over the lines of his face.
i looked up with him,
i tried to imitate him, but
he did not take any notice of me.
He just kept gazing at the oak's branches
& how small pieces of the dusk's sun tried to break through
the darkest areas of the branches.
"Grandpa, what do you see?" i asked him.
"Shhhh..." he said, "don't you see it?"
"See what, Grandpa?"
"Everything is finally quiet."
Reviews
"Frank's poems are honest and moving documents from one human to any other with the ear and heart to receive them. They do much to remind me it is important to try and be truly alive in this, our time upon the earth."
—William Taylor Jr., author of An Age of Monsters
"You're sitting in a dark room, alone, washing down Valium with coffee, wishing you could see the stars through the dirty window; instead, you see a reflection of yourself, the lines on your face heavier, the life in your eyes drained. You hope for something better: a better girl, a better place, a better you. Cigarette smoke cuts the bitterness for a second. You squint, through the haze, trying so hard to see something in yourself. The heater brightens the room when you take a drag. There's nothing left. May as well write about it and hope to hell someone comes along to share your coffee and your life, making those damn lines mean something more than just empty scars."
—R L Raymond, editor, Pigeon Bike Press
"These poems are accessible without being boring, narrative without being predictable or stale. Frank Reardon possesses a vital, singular voice."
—Misti Rainwater-Lites, writer and editor
"Frank Reardon presents the self, suspended, stepping away from moments to observe their context, attentive to unusual details, emerging changed in the face of them. He remains the poet in the “pause” of his earlier collection, Interstate Chokehold, but readers will find that his world has changed: his influences more accessible, his connection inextricable, less transcendent. His is now a quieter agitation- a processing, toward more stable ground. The Nirvana Haymaker reveals an evolving poetic, candid and confessional as before, but tapping into new psychic territories where his imagination is given a more confident liberty."
—Lynn Alexander, editor, Full of Crow Press
Frank Reardon's poetry is high-voltage! It's like when my brother stuck a screwdriver in an outlet to see what it would do and it did. Reardon's words change who you are and your perception of the world as you know it forever. Get ready!
—Meg Tuite, fiction editor of The Santa Fe Literary Review
"If you have any feelings left then the poems in The Nirvana Haymaker will disturb you. Not because there's something wrong with them but because what of they reveal about Mr. Reardon's depth of personal examination. There are precious few who are writing with such honesty these days."
—RD Armstrong, editor & founder of Lummox Press
