“Since this podcast is going reasonably well, I’m going to read “Scowl.”

Scowl

By Ginsey Allens

For Fat Ron

I

I saw the scummiest bums of my generation enjoy their fatness, sweating, idiotic,

sun-burnt,

sleeping away under the grape-vines at noon readying an angry toot,

extended-bucket schemesters heaving for the methamphetamedic connection to the cat

funeral in the fiduciary fight,

…

III

Fat Ron! I’m with you and your pinned legs

where you were sleepier than I am

I’m with you and Runyon

when with money he’s confused

I’m with you and Drill

when he claims the buckets of another

I’m with you in the dirt

when your water went unpaid

I’m with you in the vineyard

in my nightmares you toddle from a TV-dinner on Trump-Toots across

“Great America Again” in sweats to the gates of my sanity in the Southern scum

Wadmalaw Island, 2019