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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: Why Try Poetry?

Oct 24, 2024

Updated: Nov 23, 2024

Why Try Poetry?

Why James Joyce? That fight will just have to wait

For some other too soon happy hours.

One quatrain’s too slight for such stout debate.

Some brawls last past the hour Guinness sours.

First round, I punched up the formal essay,

Nothing too stiff, but strange, looping, and light.

The ref bounced me out to the alleyway.

Management barred me and sneered nighty-night.

From their dive they jeered and cheered my exile

With chins too weak for my meek and mild prose.

Take a dive just to thrive? Not my style.

I asked, where’s no-holds-barred, anything goes?

Poetry’s what you can get away with.

So, now I juice on James Joyce and plead the fifth.

Subscribe and stay tuned for more eighty-sixed sonnets.

Same tuned-up time, same chin-down channel.

My Own Private Ulysses: Ulysses is Not a Novel

Oct 15, 2024

Ulysses is Not a Novel

No, Joyce’s Ulysses is no novel.

Yes, it’s novel, as the poet said, new.

Yes, it may, tricks play, and make you grovel

No, you can’t load art like Neo’s Kung Fu.

Like life worthwhile, it takes miles of time.

If it’s a poem, it’s of epic space

Like its pre-echo, Homer’s old view rhyme,

And reverberates all over the place.

But poetry’s squidly definitions

Cannot capture Joyce’s nouveau gestalt.

Science mistook for art of magicians

Results when the old falls under assault.

Like it or not, Joyce’s art broke the hold

Of space and time the old matrix controlled.

Subscribe and stay tuned for more new sonnets.

Same bullet-time time, same red pill channel.

Jaggerbush's Confession

Oct 8, 2024

- Flash Fiction from The Red Brick Alley

I walked into the principal’s office again. Jaggerbush was sitting across from Sister Kelly Pork Belly. Christmas was coming, and her pop-bottle glasses were foggy because she was already overheated...

Read the whole misadventure at Ghost City Press.

Robert Roman