Thomas Pletcher Archives

New Fiction on the American Divide

The following story was accepted two years ago by Gargoyle, a literary magazine based in Washington, D.C. It has just been published this summer, due to pandemic delays. (Check it out: you’re looking for issue #75, the one with the traffic cone on the cover. Because of the editorial delays this issue is much thicker than usual and chock full of good stuff.)

“Sparks” is written from the point of view of an economically disadvantaged young person in upstate New York on the eve of the 2020 presidential election. I believe it remains relevant today.

Trump on TV. He lost, but how did he reach so many people? Photo source: washingtonpost.com.

“Sparks”
by Thomas Pletcher

It’s early November, Monday I think, and I’m driving my beat-up bike around Winwood feeling chilly in my thin denim jacket and trying to figure out what to do next. I’m going to need to find work at some point but that becomes harder to do when the weather turns cold. There are some construction jobs going on—there are plenty of new houses being built—but the crews are usually locked in by this time of year. And I don’t feel like doing scut work on someone’s fancy-ass house project anyway, especially once it starts snowing. Plus there’s the masks and the distancing and all.

This is an election year, not that that means anything.

I’m thinking I could really use some oxy, or at the very least a six-pack, but I’m strapped as usual. I’ve only got one pill left and I don’t want to use it until I know I can get more. I don’t have a lot of money left, either. Then it occurs to me that Carl Stolz, my hard-hearted dealer, might take something other than cash if I can come up with the right something—some nice jewelry, maybe, or a big chunky watch. At this point I’m rounding the steep wide curve going up Circus Road when I see a white Tesla SUV with some smug-looking fuck behind the wheel turn out of his long driveway and head down the hill.

Well, well, I ask myself, who’s this? Probably the guy who owns that big new house. I throw a quick glance at the driver as the Tesla slides by but the stuck-up bastard just keeps his eyes on the curving road. I slow slightly and my piece-of-shit Kawasaki starts belching even louder but as far as Mr. Tesla is concerned I simply don’t exist. Once he rounds the curve and disappears down the hill I cut my engine and pull the bike into the short driveway of a smaller house across the way.

Continue reading “New Fiction on the American Divide”

A Nod to Empathy

I’ve just published a poem, “Transient,” in Poetry Quarterly (issue #30, Summer 2017, running a bit behind schedule). Because the magazine is behind a paywall, you would need to purchase a rather expensive printed copy or else subscribe to the online version to read it. That being the case, and because the poem is about empathy, a quality sorely needed today, I’ll reproduce it here.

—Thomas Pletcher

“Transient”

A damaged person on the floor,
filthy, scuffed, like the station itself.
Above the person hulks a cop, hand
on holster. The cop smirks and says, get up.
Get up scumbag and move the hell out.
His victim tries to stand but slumps back down,
a person in transit who needs to rest awhile.
No vagrants in the terminal
the cop says. Port Authority badge.
I remember this the only way I can,
hazily, since I
was drinking myself.
All this many years ago, when
the city’s days were dim and grim.
What was wrong with that person?
Couldn’t he/she rise?
Has karma messed that cop up by now?
I walk over and see the dull badge
has no name, only a number. Meanwhile,
the individual moans.
We need some help here, I say.
Some help my ass the cop says.
He kicks the prone figure once, then leaves.
I bend down to check:
that numb stare could yet be anyone’s.
Yours. Mine.

High on Antiphon

I recently published a poem in Antiphon, the estimable UK online poetry magazine. Although the poem’s title is “High,” the heading of this post refers to the magazine as a whole—it is simply excellent, and serves as a wonderful antidote to today’s bleak morning headlines.

Antiphon is edited by Rosemary Badcoe (who is also the magazine’s designer) and Noel Williams, and it is an obvious labor of love. Each issue (which the magazine’s website notes is archived by the British Library) features a wide range of poetry, with careful attention paid to sound, rhythm and image. The magazine is friendly towards metrical and non-metrical work, and its editors have very good ears. Some of the standout poems in this new issue (no. 21) include “The Weather We Call Raw” and “Sylvia’s Games” by David Troupes, “A catch-all” by Patrick Theron Erickson, “A Bag of Frozen Kidney Beans” by Burgi Zenhaeusern, “C282Y” by Susan L Leary and “Afterwards” by Anthony Watts. There are a number of other very good poems as well. The tone nods toward the traditional but standards are quite high (no pun intended). You won’t find any Michael Robbins poems here. Not that there’s anything wrong with Michael Robbins; he simply operates with a different set of criteria in mind.

Ms. Badcoe says, in her prologue to this issue, that she disagrees with the idea that all poetry is political. I concur—politics tends to coarsen language and ideas, and never more so than today. I’ve spent far too much time recently thinking and writing about political issues. It is enormously liberating to take another path and come at the world and its meanings from a different angle.

Poetry is an endangered species these days. I read recently that fewer than seven percent of American adults read it at all. This is highly unfortunate, because poetry has a special role to play in fostering greater understanding.

Again, Rosemary Badcoe: “Poetry is subtle, and takes the long view, the intensely focused close view, the light-bent-around-a-corner view. It uses precise, carefully observed language and appreciates nuance and differences and similarities. There are better ways to protest than to write a poem, I’d contend, but writing a poem is one way of expressing the complexity of a world that others would try to reduce to sound-bites.”

I’m delighted to be published in Antiphon. I’ll reproduce “High” here eventually but I’d like to give the magazine exclusivity until their next issue appears. In the meantime, the Antiphon blog features audio recordings of many of the poems in this issue, including mine.