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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: Offline Odysseys

4 hours ago

Offline Odysseys

Go see The Odyssey in a theater,

Think on it, talk of it, read about it,

Read whatever translation of Homer,

Then read another you heard is horseshit.

Maybe even learn a few words of Greek,

And read that short poem by Tennyson,

Tune in to a podcast, be a good geek,

Watch The Odyssey of Homer Simpson.

And Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou,

And Douglas, Assante, Fiennes, it’s your choice.

Then if you’re prepared to repeat wow, wow,

Read the best book, Ulysses by James Joyce.

Online fights: Do you truly care who won?

Real life’s short: Isn’t Art s’posed to be fun?

My Own Private Ulysses: Joycespearean Sonnet 144

Jul 18

Updated: 4 hours ago

Joycespearean Sonnet 144

Two games I play of James Joyce and Will’s verse,

Which toy with your boy inversely in turn.

But life invades my wordy universe:

A devil girl’s love. Will I ever learn?

My games were interlaced, but life was not,

And since we interfaced, it’s all infused.

My demon lover’s just too goddamned hot,

Her intercourse has left me all-confused.

To win my games involves some homing in,

Devotion, discipline, fidelity.

But I’m infected with her sweets of sin,

Her Hell insures my immortality.

I dreamt a happy couplet for this verse,

Then Circe woke and laid me in her hearse.

My Own Private Ulysses: Joycespearean Sonnet 18

Jul 6

“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!

Robert Roman