Tag Archives: coffee

2026, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life

Juggalo Sasquatch lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Living At Large at the Easton Book Festival

Photo by Frogg Corpse

My mind was somewhere between drawing out the three pillars of my Tao and debating whether I was going to get more sausage when I got up to get more coffee when out of the corner of my eye I saw a large patch of dark back hair, the hairiest ass crack I’ve seen since the locker room after high school gym, and what looked like a back tattoo, cutting through the forest of hair like a b-movie explorer.

I was focusing on my eggs, sausage, and coffee. The breakfast at the Valley View Inn and Suites in Bethlehem, PA was a pretty good one. Scrambled eggs, sausage links, breakfast potatoes, the usual array of breads,spreads and jams, decent coffee. I appreciated that they didn’t try putting out biscuits and gravy. I am a bit of a snob about gravy, like I am about chili when it’s chili and not hot dog sauce. Having spent the majority of my adult life south of the World’s Great Wound, the Ohio River, I am particular about gravy. I also don’t eat it often, but that’s primarily because I’m 53 and need to be more thoughtful about what I’m eating and what I’m not eating. On the rare occasion Amanda makes gravy, I eat it: not just because she’s an amazing cook and her biscuits are out of this world, but also because the gravy is off the chain good. Gravy too far north tends to be flavorless pepper gravy. The exception to this rule is in midwestern farm country, especially the northwest corner of Illinois; the sausage is sage heavy rather than spicy, but delicious. 

No muss no fuss

The hotel was comfortable and not especially fancy. Clean and well maintained. Very little muss or fuss. Bethlehem is only about 20 minutes west of Easton on PA 22, a stretch of road that made me wonder if road rules were simply different in Pennsylvania or if I’ve always been a slightly aggressive driver. By and large, no one knows how to merge into traffic from an off ramp there, and I’m not entirely sure why. Notwithstanding my issues with traffic, the time my road dog Frogg Corpse and I spent at the Easton Book Festival was amazing. I had to scramble a bit to get the cash together to make that trip; this involved taking a little money out of a retirement account I’d started with my old business a few years back but hadn’t really done much with. Being itinerantly employed since October 24, 2025 has had a cost; primarily my credit rating and my ability to save against the future, the concern about either not being a natural inclination for me. 

When I was much younger, I’d have just gone and worried about sleeping when I got there; but I’m trying to remember that, whenever possible, having a bed to sleep in and access to at least one meal a day is a good thing. So is a shower. 

And I had to be ready to put on a good show. In addition to some amazing open mics, where I got to share the mic with an amazing array of poets including Frogg Corpse, E Lynn Alexander, Darrell Parry, and Linda Kleinbub, C.O. Moed, and Phillip Giambri, I was rolling out The Tao of Outlaw Publishing for a second, and final (for this year, anyway) time. I’m not much of a people pleaser but I do feel a sense of obligation when people who don’t know me well express some faith in my ability to do what I say I’m going to do. I wanted to do well. And, like most every other time when I travel, I don’t always sleep well after the first night. 

Breakfast Etiquette

It’s entirely possible he thought we were scrubs… what the juggalos used to call societal outcasts. We are poets, and I do drive a car that looks like it’s survived multiple driveby graffities.

My mind was somewhere between drawing out the three pillars of my Tao and debating whether I was going to get more sausage when I got up to get more coffee when out of the corner of my eye I saw a large patch of dark back hair, the hairiest ass crack I’ve seen since the locker room after high school gym, and what looked like a back tattoo, cutting through the forest of hair like a b-movie explorer. Frogg, who is himself tattooed but not nearly so hirsute, had apparently drawn the attention of the man, now and forever remembered in the annals of history as The Juggalo Sasquatch.

I’d seen him outside smoking with a woman. They were clearly traveling together. When I asked Frogg what happened to elicit such a reaction from the man, he only told me that not only was the tattoo a juggalo hatchet man, but a camouflaged juggalo hatchet man. It’s entirely possible he thought we were scrubs… what the juggalos used to call, and may for all I know still call,  societal outcasts. We are tattooed poets, and I do drive a car that looks like it’s survived multiple driveby graffities. We went on about our day, and had a wonderful day at the book festival. When we returned later in the evening, the female companion of Juggalo sasquatch was outside smoking a cigarette. 

“How was your day?” she asked me. 

I answered in a friendly, non-committal way. It had been a good day. Some good panels, some good thoughts, very good coffee at Tapestry, a wonderful coffee shop and bar there on Northampton in the heart of Easton.  Socializing exacts a heavy toll on me and I was needing the quiet of the room, a few hours of non-verbalizing, and maybe some dinner. Frogg was in a similar state. I can’t over-emphasize how important it is that you find some equilibrium with the people you travel with. Not everyone travels well. Not everyone travels well with other people. Frogg and I had done some short road trips before taking on the 11 hour drive to northeast Pennsylvania, so I pretty much knew how traveling with him would go; but you don’t get to know someone on the road until you’re actually on the road with them. Frogg, like me, has a shallow well of social energy he can draw from. We were both needing to not be social for a while. 

When we got back to the room I thought, Fuck. Are we friends with Mr. and Mrs. Sasquatch now? 

Then I realized I said it out loud. I knew it was probably unkind. She seemed nice enough, in comparison to Juggalo Sasquatch who had a look behind his eyes that I would call mildly aggressive. That’s not to say I was especially worried about him being aggressive towards either Frogg or me. But I do take note of such things. And I also wondered about the daily life of the now monikered Mrs. Sasquatch. 

“You have to write that now,” Frogg said while trying not to fall down laughing. I knew he was right. Unkind or not, I was tied to the observation.

Paying Attention

Our future interactions were brief and friendly. I started to look for signs that she wasn’t ok. Maybe unfair, but I’ve seen too many situations in which women are stuck with a low-rent psycho and don’t know how to get out. It’s one of the methods by which women in this country are trafficked: one hairy or not angry guy who is willing to trade time with the “love of his life” for a packet of ramen noodles or a run to a McDonald’s drive thru. I didn’t see anything that made me think she was being held against her will. 

I don’t always act kind, but I do pay attention. And after paying attention, I understood more why they hoped maybe we could all be friends. We all stuck out among the other guests at the hotel. I tend to take on a feral look when I’m out on the road for more than a couple of days. Frogg always looks a little feral. Most everyone else at the Valley View Inn and Suites were more towards the yuppie end of the scale. Frogg always looks the way you think someone artistic and gothically inclined should look. I always look like I just stepped off a 20 hour bus ride.

We didn’t see them the morning we left, but it was early. After all, it was at least an 11 hour drive westbound, over the mountains and back down to the lower Ohio River Valley.

 

[originally published at: https://eymick.substack.com/p/juggalo-sasquatch-lives-in-bethlehem]

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river possum, Ohio River, work, poetry
2026, Ohio River Valley Literature, prose, Working Class Literature

The River Possum meditates on the life of that perfect pipe wrench for a particular use:

the blue heron, the wrench, down and west off Big Savage Mountain

Saturday night on the river. The cruise ended up being a dockside event because of wind. People ask me all the time if we still cruise when it’s raining. They almost always seem surprised when I say “Yes, rain doesn’t keep us dockside. But the wind will.” A flat bottom sternwheel steamboat becomes a sail if there’s a cross wind above 20 miles per hour in the channel on the Ohio River. Our other boat, the Mary M. Miller, can manage because she has two screws, each turned by 425 horsepower straight six diesel engines attached to Cummins generators with copper rings about the same diameter of a large pizza. This past Saturday night in particular, the captains decided to make a go of it. It had been raining all day, the way it rains around here when Fall makes its proper appearance. One day it’s so hot you’re sweating in places you think time and the elements have forgotten; the next day, it rains, the leaves on the trees begin to actively let go and put on the end of summer fashion show, and there’s an ever so slight but brisk kiss in the wind. Saturday was that day. And I could tell by the white caps and the choppy waves on the river that I might get a call on the telegraph to go Astern Half on the boiler to give them more steam and more pull for getting the boat off the 4th Street Wharf. And that’s what happened. But even with all the steam I was giving them, even with all the steam the chief was giving them, the wind won out the day and we stayed dockside.

That’s the way it goes sometimes. And while there were still passengers who insisted on abusing the crew and food and beverage folks for things well outside their pay grade, the night went off as well as a last minute dockside event could go off. Stephen, the Night Chief, gave me and the other Engineering Assistant the option for one of us to go home. Dockside events only require a licensed engineer and a plus one to keep an eye on the boiler, the gen sets, whatever. I told Stephen I needed the hours, which was true. Kevin, who also has retirement income from a storied career at FedEx, went home. 

Being on the water, being down on the 4th Street Wharf, the Space Between the Bridges, means being at once in a single place and in all places all at once; the Ohio River connects, in some fashion, everything to everything. I was moored, in a way, at the 4th Street Wharf. It was a necessary shipyard stop.

I get scheduled for roughly two cruises a week. I’m grateful to be back, but still very much aware of the reasons why I need to be back at all: namely, a year ago this month, my career was pulled out from under me. Sometimes I think I should approach this with all the focus and rage of a good old fashion revenge movie. One of those with all the blood and bile and drama of a Criterion Collection Kurosawa movie. In this situation, one should always ask, “What would Toshiro Mifune do?” Depending on whether you’re in Seven Samurai mode or Yohimbo  mode, the reaction can vary. If you’re in Rashomon mode, you’re just getting blamed for all the shit you didn’t do because of the shit you actually did do that people choose to remember. I’m eight years sober, so my Drunken Angel era (I hope)  is over. But generally I think it matters more to live in the moment I’m in and use what comes. That’s as close to tao as I manage to get.

I’ve made and continue to make good use of my time; doing what might be some of the best writing of my life. Tension is the wellspring for art. Even if it’s just the tension between the non-gel tip of a pen and the texture of the paper used. Tension is the invisible ingredient that turns craft into art; it’s Grandma’s finger in the cookie dough that makes the cookies taste better. And while my poetry has always existed in a state of tension, my last three collections of poetry: Growl & Mud, A Treatise on Unseen Stars, and The Call Sign is Jonah, exist as the end result of tension between poetry and working: first as a lot dog (event security for university sports at a university where I used to teach), then as a wharf dog and finally as a river possum.  And right now, the tension from which my craft is hopefully becoming art is the tension of being the particular pipe wrench for that particular use. 

Coming back from Frostburg, west and down Big Savage Mountain, I realized that no matter how often I return to the river for work, connection, solace, and baptism, I will have to also push myself out into the world. Being on the water, being down on the 4th Street Wharf, the Space Between the Bridges, means being at once in a single place and in all places all at once; the Ohio River connects, in some fashion, everything to everything. I was moored, in a way, at the 4th Street Wharf. It was a necessary shipyard stop. I was able to get my first hip surgery. I found the blue heron and the giant cat fish. I met mermaids and drowned men and shadow walkers. And I learned about the world under the water. I was told the stories of great people and quiet people and true people. River folk are the keepers of stories, the living vaults of forgotten knowledge. Standing watch on the wharf in the winter is its own baptism, as is contending with the flood water. I was reborn and found a poetics of growls and mud that continues to speak and insist that the wind is calling. I don’t know what the coming year holds. I hope I get to be back on the river. I love the folks I work with, and I love a 112-year-old living memory steam machine. 

Down and west, driving back on I-68, the concrete rode like wind thermal, taking me and Amanda home. The funny thing about thermals and wind currents is that while they’re generally predictable, conditions can make them shift, too. It’s important to be ready to shift with them. And so sometimes, I’m that perfect pipe wrench for that particular job. And sometimes, I’m the giant catfish, fighting upstream. And sometimes, I’m the blue heron. 

 

[originally published on 10.7.26: https://eymick.substack.com/p/the-river-possum-meditates-on-the]

 

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2026, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

Notes towards a new poem

[Who is the chickenman?]

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