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.