AN EXCERPT FROM “ON THE EVE OF MY TWENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY”

I wear my black leather jacket
and brown leather boots, and I leave

my house, walking north along the back roads
leading to the stadium. This is Indiana.

This is the beginning of March, and the snow
has melted from the roads, and the clouds

are shallow enough for the strongest stars
to make themselves known, to keep me

looking up until I pass someone walking
in the other direction, who’ll look up, also, to see

whatever he thinks I’m seeing…

ABOUT THE POET

Doug Paul Case works as a salon receptionist in Bloomington, where he recently received his MFA from Indiana University. He is the poetry editor of Word Riot and the publisher of Gabby. His poems have appeared in Salt Hill, Rattle, Washington Square, and Court Green, and his debut chapbook, Something to Hide My Face In, won the 2013/14 Robin Becker Prize from Seven Kitchens Press.

COVER ARTIST

Ben McNutt’s personal work for the past four years has focused on wrestling through various media such as portraiture, still life, clothing, and sculpture. (His piece featured on the cover is titled “Wrestler.”)

PRAISE

“No one can resist the allure of Doug Paul Case’s honest-with-a-wink poems musing on a certain strain of modern Americana alive and well in the Rust Belt. These poems are slow and then fast, sprinkled with sparky humor and sly wit and raw, gorgeous lust—with the occasional glimpse of a totally not-at-all gratuitous penis.” —Carrie Murphy, author of Pretty Tilt and Fat Daisies