Shoot the freak Cold wind, boardwalk nearly empty You know you wanna / A cluster of hip-hop Lubavitch punks, shirt tails out, talking tough You shoot him / he don’t shoot back / Keeper-flatties thrashing in buckets, out there on the pier / Shoot the freakin’ freak A regular family of man out there, fishing for fluke / and blues in that wind How you gonna build memories Everything shut down / or gone Let the lady have a try Sponge Bob, Spookerama, Luna Park / Shoot ‘im in the head the Mighty Atom, Thunderbolt, Wonder Wheel / He likes it when you shoot ‘im in the face SurfHouse, Astroland, Shutzkin’s / knishes, A real live human target ‘Hungry for Fun’, fried clams / Everybody’s gonna ‘Bump yo’ ass, bump bump bump yo’ ass’ / You know you wanna You know you wanna You know you wanna

…

I had taken my daughter to Coney Island last week and when my eyes fell upon the above opening lines–no, just the title–of a poem by August Kleinzahler in the LRB, I recognized the landscape instantly. “Shoot the Freak”–I was feeding French fries to my girl and saw those words in the distance and wondered about them. I like the poem because it evokes all those details, sights and sounds and smells, that remain in my mind, like sand, after our afternoon’s visit to boardwalk. But what the poem also does, the rest of it which I haven’t copied down for you, is that it quickly sketches into the horizon the human drama of fame and mortality, a commentary on something that is worn and vital at the same time.

(Click on the poet’s name above to read Marjorie Perloff’s more critical assessment of Kleinzahler)