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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: Joycespearean Sonnet 18

20 hours ago

“Uncle Charles, puffing away at his pipe in the outhouse he calls “his arbour” is a Namer, and deserves to have something named for him. So let us designate the Uncle Charles Principle: the narrative idiom need not be the narrator’s.” - Hugh Kenner, Joyce’s Voices

Joycespearean Sonnet 18

Shall I repair what Kenner made in err?

The Uncle Charles Principle he swung,

While Lily’s “literally’s” far more fair

Than Wyndham’s rough “repair.” Yet, she’s unsung?

Young Lily was at bat before old Chuck,

A Portrait of the Artist tails The Dead,

But life-like, figuratively she’s stuck.

How base her lovely name goes so unsaid.

But Lily’s summer shall not fade away.

There will be joy in Joyceville. Do not pout,

For in eternal sun she’ll have her day.

And this will strike unmighty Charles out!

What’s Uncle Charles Principle’s repair?

The Daughter Lily Dilemma, I’declare!

My Own Private Ulysses: Post Bloomsday Blues

Jun 21

Post Bloomsday Blues

And another Bloomsday’s in the books,

So, no more naughty, bad words, boo-hoo-hoo!

And no more goody prude-shoes’ dirty looks.

So, what’s a James Joyce junkie s’posed to do?

Get lit on today’s lit? What big stores sell?

Or run the marathon of Moby Dick?

Oh, no, without my Joyce fix, life’ll be Hell.

I want red-headed women’s donkey kick!

How ‘bout the Tower Academia?

No, I need nectar, the sweet streets of Joyce.

Don’t sour my hypoglycemia,

His blooming flower’s my sole drug of choice.

Now how do you suggest I stay less stressed?

Try summer school in James Joyce’s Trieste.

My Own Private Ulysses: On a Wall of the Glyptotek

Apr 6

Art by Paul Cezanne,

Self Portrait with Bowler Hat, 1885

“Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul.

He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence.

Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now.

At four she…”

- Ulysses, James Joyce

Today’s Ezraku:

On a Wall of the Glyptotek

Cezanne’s incomplete hat and shoulder: hurried or snow-flurried?

Beneath Bloom’s bowler: a brain blurried and completely worried.

Robert Roman