‘Real Writer’

Sjafril Riz

Real Writer

Classic sucker punch to the solar plexus 

introducing him as ‘a real writer’ to me her ex

like it’s fact and not newly infatuated opinion

— well it’s forgotten for the next forty odd years 

until that night at the indie bookstore 

we boomer poets reading as usual 

to ourselves our passions primal 

rhymes reasonable humility bedrock.

Later noticing bookstore’s display 

of best-seller with comics-colorful cover 

author’s big boldface name ringing a bell 

— many bells in fact … like tinnitus. 

Morbidly obese novel — third in a trilogy no less

about humans living on Mars in the year 2324.

Real writer my ass I say to perplexed proprietor 

as we poets exit into the chill of Panhandle fog.

Robert Eugene Rubino is the author of "Douglas Knocks Out Tyson" (UnCollected Press). His prose and poetry has been published in various print and online journals including Hippocampus, Moonstone, Cagibi and The Write Launch.