About the Poems - NP
About the Poems
by Nate Pritts JUST US FRIENDS! Roll Call! BLUE – a rock, stable. The big brother type, he’s constantly bailing his wacky pals out of trouble. Watch him sock it to the bullies! RED – a smart-alecky hot head but loyal like a puppy you saved from the river. Don’t get him started, he’s liable to jump right out of his skin! GREEN – earnest. His world is a cosmic equation that always balances! I – me. Mixed-up. * JUST US FRIENDS! may be the first sitcom poem. That’s one of the ways I thought of it as I was writing the fifty poems that make up this sequence—a cast of characters thrown into improbable situations over & over again to see how they react. As a way of being cute, let me say that the ostensible “scene” of each poem is somewhat ekphrastic in nature though I refuse to divulge the source. The world this group of friends lives in is sort of like ours. For instance, the people in this world have a complex internal apparatus (we’ll call this “emotions”) that are acted upon and impacted by certain external stimuli. They may smile or cry as a result. They reveal to us, through their exaggerated reactions to completely ridiculous situations, something human. Sadly, the friends eventually drift apart. All good things… * WHERE ARE THEY NOW? BLUE – A doctor with his own private practice in a sleepy suburb; he is seen as a pillar of the community. RED – Has finally moved out of his parent’s basement into an apartment that is not unlike a basement. Spends long hours chatting with “elves” on his computer. GREEN – Is learning to love again. Is trying to take it day by day. & I is a correspondent (T. Berrigan). Other JUST US FRIENDS! poems can be found at storySouth, 42opus & Coconut. Collect them all!