No One Here Gets Out Alive
I must have been sixteen
when I took down the posters
above my bed
of Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith
in beach bikinis
with contoured stomachs
and lipstick smiles
– Charlie’s sexiest angels –
and replaced them
with a leather-collared close-up
of Jim Morrison.
When my father ripped Morrison off the wall
I returned the next day
to Hilltop Mall
and bought a replacement.
A shouting match ensued.
Me standing guard at the poster.
My mother in the middle.
My father rage-faced,
thrusting a pointed finger at Morrison,
then at me, making threats
that he would never follow through on.
It felt pointless to even try to explain
that I had just read No One Here Gets Out Alive
and everything had changed.
That I was on a new diet
of psilocybin mushrooms
and cannabis sativa
and my mind had become a fledgling sun
rising up behind a mountain,
seeing the world for the first time.
My father was a high-school basketball legend
from a coal-mining town
who turned down a college scholarship
to move to California and raise a family.
He busted his ass at blue-collar jobs.
He was a good man.
His boy was no All-American.
Johnny Cordova grew up in El Cerrito, California, and has spent much of his adult life in Arizona and Southeast Asia. After dropping out of the literary scene for 17 years, he returned to writing poetry in 2021. Recent work appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Moon City Review, Salt Hill Journal, Soundings East, and elsewhere. He lives at Triveni Ashram, in northern Arizona, where he co-edits Sh? Poetry Journal with his wife, Dominique Ahkong.
