Monday, July 7, 2025

Chapbook Mockup

Larry Wolf, Louisville Poems Chapbook (2025)

Louisville Poems, 1994 - 1996, originally posted to thepoint.net, now on this blog and a 1-of-1 chapbook.

[Index of Poems]

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Too Much

Don’t be too adorable, it gets your cheek pinched
Don’t be so sensitive, you cry baby
Don’t be too smart, kids will throw rocks at you
Don’t have a flashy bike, someone will take it at knife point
Don’t fight for your stuff, you’ll only get hurt
Don’t pin a towel around your neck as a cape, who do you think you are? Superman?
Don’t be too Bronx, people will make fun of how you speak
Don’t use big words, people will think you’re trying to impress and don’t know what you’re talking about
Don’t be teacher’s pet, you suck up!
Don’t hum while you’re working, if you do, be on key
Don’t be fat, kids in Europe are starving
Don’t be too Jewish, millions were exterminated
You don’t even know how to be Jewish, not like cousin Marty, he goes to yeshiva
Don’t be an ugly American, you klutz
Don’t be too powerful, leaders get stabbed in the back
Don’t be so accommodating, they’re taking advantage of you
Don’t be too gay, Jim is awfully effeminate
Don’t be too flirty, your lingering look will get you punched in the face

Let that be a lesson to you.

-- Larry Wolf, 2 July 2025

Monday, June 30, 2025

Holding You

Devil’s Rope, Laramie, 1998 

October 
A chill breeze comes off the Rockies
My ruddy wires cast shadows from the warrior moon
A quiet night

A truck pulls up
You and two others stagger out
They tower over you
Push you
Threaten you
Growl
FAGGOT
ON YOUR KNEES
Your face at their crotches
You plead

They pull out their
Gun 
Raise it
Bash the butt 
Into your head
your head
your head

You crumple
They drag you, toss you
Onto me
I sag, hold your unconscious weight

Doors slam
Engine starts
Tires spin up dirt
They’re gone

We’re alone
Your arms thrown backwards over me
My taut wire cuts into your armpits
barbs tear your shirt and skin
Your head hangs listless

Your breath
Rough
Ragged
Irregular

Shivering
Shaking
Convulsing
Your spasms pulse through me

Then 
Still
Limp 
Seeping blood
Cold night

I can offer 
No help
No warmth
Only presence

In the faintest dawn
A passing runner, pauses, wonders
Is that a scarecrow?
Sees it is a boy
Goes for help

Sirens
Police
Flashing lights
Ambulance
Useless

We’re entangled 
I quiver as you're lifted
Carried away
Clinging to life
Bits of your clothes
flesh
blood
On me, left behind

Cars arrive
Candles
A vigil
Days and nights

A stream of mourners
River of mourners
Flood of mourners

Months pass
Still they come

We spent a night together
Your last night out
Out 
Under the vast sky you loved so much

Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard

-- Larry Wolf, 30 June 2025

Larry Wolf, Held (Zine Photo 2025/Fence Photo 2010)


An earlier version of this poem was read at Maine Media Workshops on June 27, 2025, at the conclusion of The Photographic Poem with Richard Blanco.

The above photo is of my zine Rough Raw Reclaimed (2021). The text, on the inside of the zine, reads:

Tear Streaked Cheeks

On a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, a man was beaten and left to die on a cold October night, 1998. Matthew Shepard became the poster child of gay hate crimes. There were candlelight vigils – organized all too quickly and too well. We should not be so good at this public mourning and outcry. Enough is enough. 

The trial. The protestors chanting hell for the homosexual. The angelic counter-protests. His parents. Their compassion. Their determination. The plays, art, chorale works and politics that followed.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law in 2009. Two brutal deaths in 1998, one homophobic, one racist. A decade. Another decade. Much still to do.
 

An Earlier View from the Fence

Jeff Sheng's MFA Thesis Exhibition included a large forty foot wide by six foot high digitally constructed panoramic photographic installation, titled "Where Matthew Lay Dying: Laramie, Wyoming," originally shot and taken from the spot and vantage point where the hate crime/murder victim Matthew Shepard was found on a fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming. 

[Wikipedia Entry for Jeff Sheng]

Saturday, June 28, 2025

Rockport Rugosa etc

Larry Wolf, etc - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rugosa - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rugosa - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rugosa - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Tree with House - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Tree with Lichen - Rockport Maine (2025)

Larry Wolf, Seeds - Rockport Maine (2025)

Rockport Harbor Photo Album

Larry Wolf, Hemingway - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Self-Portrait - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Working Lobster Boat - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Boat Launch Approach - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Zip Tied Infrastructure - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Shadow and Stairs - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Lime Kiln - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf, Lime Kiln - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Larry Wolf - Rockport Harbor (2025)

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Thorny Beauty

Portrait of a Shipwrecked Invader 

Shades of green with pops of white 
A tightly wrapped bud with a blush of pink
A pure white whorl of petals glows in the morning light
A star of sepals surrounds a wiry ring of spent stamen around the ovary incubating seeds.

Survivor of salt spray and freezing winters
Impassable thickets of rugosa spread from underground runners
 - Armoring spikes protect tender shoots and a stockade of stalks 
Hips dense with seeds nourish animals who further spread the robustly prolific plant.

A schooner filled with horticultural oddities floundered and its cargo fell into the ocean
Scrawny and scraggly, the specimens broke free of their crates and settled in the sand, sent out scouts, secured a beachhead, largely unnoticed
Rooted deeply in the land, gone native, crossbreed, flourished
A new participant shifted the ecology.

-- Larry Wolf, 26 June/7 July 2025

Larry Wolf, Thorny Beauty (2025)

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Family

Sonya at Sixteen

Surrounded - Heshel, Miriam, Ruthie, Harold, Abe -
no Anita
headaches, dizzy, bewildered, dead
just before Pesach
we moved on
like always
running 
running from
Europe
North Atlantic
vast Canada
Brooklyn
enough already

Observant, keeping the old ways, though papa keeps his yarmulke under his hat
Ruthie and I navigate - Yiddish, Russian, English - their guides in this new world
I’m ready to break out and find my way
observant of me
still I see Benji
he helped me pick out this coat
stylish
mama says I’m too ready to leave 
I should take my time
Time! 
Anita was so vibrant - now gone
shvester I miss you

We are gathered before the camera
smile but don’t smile
relax but not too much
show the people in Kyiv we’ve arrived
we have warm coats
shined shoes (well, not papa)
a professional photographer
Ruthie is ready to dance
I just want this to be over.

-- Larry Wolf, 24 June 2025

Unknown Photographer,
My Great Grandparents and their Children (1917?)