Sample Poems from Living Space
Living Space is a split collection of poetry written by Kevin Ridgeway, Gabriel Ricard, and James Duncan, with poems about the places we’ve lived and how they shaped us. You can find more about the book here, and below you’ll find three sample poems, one from each of us. This collection means a lot to us and we hope you enjoy it. Anyone interested in reviewing it is welcome to a free PDF version, just let us know!
COME AND KNOCK ON OUR DOOR
by Kevin Ridgeway
Behind much bigger houses
and surrounded by tall bamboo,
solicitors struggled to find
our tiny matchbox home
hidden in the thick brush
of Mom’s unruly house plants,
the screen door locked
and the front door opened
on a small, brown carpeted
living room, big screen Zenith
in a wooden box, babysitting me.
I got rug burn watching reruns
who always invited me to
come and knock on our door—
people who resembled
my parents and their friends,
while the Ropers resembled
a snooping outside world,
trying to discover our secrets
behind walls covered
with photos of my absent father,
who we said was recovering
in the hospital from a bad accident,
when in reality he robbed Bob’s Big Boy
and was doing time at Terminal Island,
our single mother struggling to get by,
unable to afford brand names or cable.
I was never picky about any
of the food she put on the table.
I cleaned our hand-me-down plates
and retired to the living room,
Jack Tripper giving me daydreams
of who my father might be
when he finally came home,
but until then Suzanne Somers’
bright smile helped mask the lies
we all had to tell to avoid judgment
and eviction. The show’s gentle-hearted,
horndog slapstick went over my head,
but the funky song will always remind
me of a time when my life truly lacked
company other than strangers in a box.
CANMORE 1
by Gabriel Ricard
There’s something to be said
for having less clutter
that makes the ol’ inevitable autumn years
even more emotionally challenging
in the most sarcastic-yet-sorrowful way possible.
Me, I trip while flying over the football fields
and long-lost loved ones standing around
the only light in the county, smiling,
talking, getting annoyed,
and very much alive.
So less clutter is good. I get that.
But,
and try to act surprised when I mutter this
out of nowhere
in the middle of a used bookstore spectacular,
I also
want the photo albums back.
And the CDs, thousands of bootleg concerts.
The books my mom loved best. The DVD boxsets
I gifted because I thought streaming was fine.
I want the photo albums. I want buzzing voices
to suddenly scream pitch-perfect clarity
on lost media recordings. I want these things
to stop dropping an emotional elevator from Heaven to Hell
or that deeper layer where you dig around the bones for eternity and change.
I’m very complicated. And very interesting. No, really.
Because gosh,
life is all about complicated feelings,
and that’s the kind of thing I say
when I wish I had the photo albums
of the town where I was born.
Like you, I want everything.
Like you, I’ll settle for an analog horror impression of a satisfied face
for some photos I can see in my mind in 420p and dropping
Fast.
And whoops,
we just flew downwards
at the speed of loser cartoon hero hubris,
and right past the Canmore, Alberta hospital
where I was born, the only baby
on the maternity ward,
and by good god goddamn golly gee
we just missed the street shots my mom took of Canmore.
A few of a baby in blue pajamas,
rolling around on some dark brown rugs
on a hardwood floor,
surrounded by physically immaculate furniture,
playing with a bear
and already talking and talking and talking
and talking.
And that’s about it.
I wish there was more to pass,
as we return to earth screaming in flames
and huge blue question marks.
But that’s just about all there is now.
That’s it.
LIVING SPACE
by James Duncan
between factories and highways
and schoolyards and time sheets
brick homes and cobbled streets
you found a space to grow your
heart into a son, I found a space
to stand beside you in a window
to look out upon streetlights all
turning on at once, a sort of magic
trick that never fails to delight
calm evenings we may forget
and yet
what else is the point of all the
living, breathing, waking, dying
but a string of nights like these?
