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Robert

Roman

Empire

RED BRICK ALLEY STORIES

The Killards Are Coming

Every damn day in Religion Class, Sister Anna Banana yapped about the Soviets revving up to start a nuclear war with the new president, Ronald Reagan. She said after the cities burned to Holy Hell, there’d be something called “nuclear winter” that would kill all...

Double-Strength Demon Dogs

Fantastic Freddie was the only altar boy from the Red Brick Alley. He was always consecrating Ritz Crackers and trying to make us eat them like communion wafers. He light-fingered incense from the sacristy, and he blessed water from Old Lady Tully’s spigot...

Laser Loop

I couldn’t see over the tall green school bus seat except when we hit a pothole and I bounced up in the air like a Pop-Tart jumping out of a toaster. Nobody at Saint Augie’s could believe I was allowed to go. My first school picnic ever. I was good from the day I handed in my pink...

The Boy Wonder

How the Hell did Jaggerbush get himself up there? He was clawing his way up into the open window above the Science class door like a real-life gargoyle. The blockhead of a wooden mallet stuck out of the back of his Toughskins where his butt crack was. He wore three...

Robert Roman grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, where he sold newspapers to cars from a concrete island. Read more→

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My Own Private Ulysses: Once in a Lifetime?

Mar 27, 2024

And you may find yourself drinking the black

Stuff in Kennedy’s Pub well before noon.

And you may find yourself with a shrunken sack,

In the Forty Foot, freezing like a loon.

And you may find yourself sipping red wine,

A Burgundy with fresh Gorgonzola,

In Davy Byrne’s Pub you cannot decline,

After riding in Hades’ gondola.

And you may ask yourself, is this Bloomsday?

And you may tell yourself, quite a long haul.

And you may ask yourself, what’s the right way?

And you may find out you can’t do it all.

Talking Joyce even entails David Byrne,

Heads you win, Bloomsday requires your return.

Stay tuned for more stop-making-sense sonnets.

Same talky time, same heady channel.

My Own Private Ulysses: ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP

Mar 21, 2024

I claimed the Daughters’ of Erin twelve prayers

Entitle the Odyssey episodes.

A voice said nope, one of those prickly pears,

With Wandering Soap, your weak claim implodes.

Bloom’s the wanderer. Does this need proving?

Greek by Joyce, the Jew by bigoty Buck.

And that lemon soap never stops moving

‘Round Bloom’s pockets. Their bond isn’t by luck.

But your soap’s gone from the library scene.

Your theory’s a product of derangement.

Sure, but Erin’s Daughters polished it clean,

With their keen retrospective arrangement.

Joyce did not splatter the wall with flung shit.

He made puzzles. We make the pieces fit.

Stay tuned for more spotless sonnets.

Same tidy time, same clean channel.

My Own Private Ulysses: Ulysses in Fourteen Lines

Mar 14, 2024

James Joyce wrote the greatest novel ever.

A quarter million words depict one day,

So Bloomsday will be observed forever.

Named for Leopold Bloom, who makes his way,

Through old Dublin on the sixteenth of June,

While his wife Molly conceives an affair

And calls Bloom Poldy, like he’s a buffoon.

We hear Bloom’s thoughts which wander everywhere,

Past and future, many a fancy flight.

Our hero seeks love anywhere he can:

Gerty’s beach and Bella’s whorehouse at night.

Bloom is literature’s most complete man.

Stephen, too, is a lead in Joyce’s cast.

But time’s short, that’s a whole other podcast.

Stay tuned for more oversimplification sonnets.

Same terse time, same condensed channel.

Robert Roman