Christopher Watkins
Christopher Watkins is a poet and songwriter. His poems are appearing or have appeared in The George Washington Review, Euphony, Talking River, Red Rock Review, and the anthology "In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself" (MWE Press), among others.
As a songwriter, he has released five albums under the name Preacher Boy, and has received a gold record for his songwriting work with Grammy-Winning artist Eagle-Eye Cherry.
He was born in Iowa, and has since lived in Michigan, Italy, Washington, California, Ireland, Colorado, and New York, roughly in that order. He and his missus, painter Amy Marinelli, currently reside in the town of Port Jefferson, New York.
Hell For Straight
Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
I learned how the mind works
watching a stroke
dismantle my Grandpa.
If he wanted to know what day it was,
he’d say “Chris, tell me what…
…then his face would constrict,
his eyes would cross,
the skin on his neck would redden,
…
Just Not You. Not Yet…
Monday, October 2nd, 2006Between our ninth
and tenth anniversaries,
we walk along the beach.
It’s September.
I can tell by the depth of your eyes
that you’re missing your grandmother.
She died in a fury of refusal,
a woman of faith,
fighting cancer’s victory harder
than she ever fought its challenge.
I can feel you hating death
for being certain.
Just this morning, you stood up from breakfast,
the soft flesh of your face flushed and puffing,
to take your welling tears to the bathroom.
I rose to stop you, wrap you up,
felt you mutter into my shirt
that you cannot handle “this death thing.”
We keep walking,
with the water to our left.
Across the waves, there are cities
neither you nor I have been to.
They seem wilder than the water’s breaking tide,
so far from the immediacy of small cuts in our …
