Ron Kolm

Ron Kolm is a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin. Ron is the author of Divine Comedy, Suburban Ambush, Night Shift, A Change in the Weather, Welcome to the Barbecue and Swimming in the Shallow End. He's had work in And Then, The Café Review, Gathering of the Tribes, Great Weather for Media, Maintenant, Live Mag!, Local Knowledge, NYC From the Inside, The Opiate, the Poets of Queens anthology, Public Illumination Magazine, The Red Wheelbarrow, the Riverside Poets Anthology, The Silver Tongued Devil anthology, Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts Omnibus and the Brownstone Poets anthologies. Ron’s papers were purchased by the New York University Library.

 

 

Size Matters

 

When I first moved to the Big Apple

I lived in Hell’s Kitchen.

I stopped by the Gotham Book Mart

and because I was broke

I asked if they were hiring.

“Sure,” a manager replied, pointing

to a small table with a typewriter

surrounded by tall stacks of books.

There was a tiny steel chair

almost hidden beneath it.

“If you can fit, you got the job.”

I couldn’t and didn’t. Luckily the Strand,

a much larger store, eventually hired me

so I was able to remain a New Yorker.


Me and Patti Smith

 

For a brief while

Patti Smith and I worked

in the Strand Bookstore at the same time.

I did get the chance to see her perform

with Lenny Kaye playing guitar

on a rooftop high above Grand Street,

but our main interaction happened

when she strode up to me in the store

and thrust the Caedmon recording

of James Joyce reading into my hands.

“Someone told me I looked like him

and gave me this – That’s bullshit!

I heard you like him, so it’s yours!”

I still have that record in my collection.


CBGBs                         

I worked in the Strand bookstore 

with Tom Verlaine. He invited me

to CBGBs the first time his band, 

Television, played there. 

Punk was born that night. 

I ended up getting into a fight 

with my date, and we left

to take it outside.   

Tom yelled at me the next day: 

“Why the fuck did you split?”

I responded by asking 

how the hell he knew I’d left.

“I can see everything from the stage,” 

he answered, as he continued to shelve books.


Acker Awards

 

In 2013 I got an Acker Award

from Clayton Patterson for being

the Editor of the Evergreen Review

after Barney Rosset passed away.

I actually knew Kathy Acker back

in the day when I was managing

New Morning Bookstore in Soho.

She would stop by and ask to use

our only phone, talking on it for hours,

which made it difficult to place orders.

“I need to call a publisher.” I’d beg.

“Sorry,” she’d say. “I can’t hang up –

I’ve got my agent on the line!”

And I’d go back to pricing books.


Going Home

 

One of my favorite books

Is Anne Sexton’s

The Awful Rowing Toward God.

 

In the last poem

She plays a game of cards

With God

And loses.

 

Not too long

After finishing that book

She went to her garage

Started up her car

And drove to Heaven

Perhaps to challenge God

To a rematch.


Wading Through the Wreckage

(A COVID-19 Poem)

 

The sun beats down on a world

I used to know, as I head over

To the health food store

To pick up some vitamins.

A bunch of kids exit a building

And walk towards me

Crowding the sidewalk,

Pushing and shoving

Each other, joking around,

Not wearing masks.

I shudder and detour into the street

Trying to avoid oncoming traffic,

As I flash them a peace sign.


 It takes a pandemic                                                                                                                                                  

(for Steve Zeitlin) 

It takes a pandemic 

to end a fifty-year career 

of working in New York City’s 

independent bookstores

which included The Strand, 

EastSide Books, New Morning, 

Coliseum Books, St. Mark’s 

and Posman Books

which closed on March 16th, 2020, 

due to the virus.

The last book I sold there was 

Camus’ The Plague.

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