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John Berbrich

ataraxia1114@aim.com

John Berbrich was born and raised on Long Island, New York. He has worked in factories, a car wash, food service, and as a construction grunt—has played in several experimental rock bands, and is currently employed as an obscure paperwork drudge in a dreary government office building. He and his wife Nancy are co-rulers of BoneWorld Publishing, under the aegis of which are published the literary quarterly Barbaric Yawp and the many chapbooks of MuscleHead Press. He also writes a monthly music and literary review column for Fourth Coast Entertainment Magazine. John and Nancy and a varying number of their six kids live among the northwestern foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Russell, New York.

Heaven #1

Heaven is filled with
little crooked streets
and neighbors who always return
what they borrow

The rivers dive deep
between the cloudbanks
filled with fish, sparkling under
the noon-day sun

Nights are cool
more stars than you can count
blacker than Satan’s heart
sweeter than an apple

There’s a little five and dime
with bargains twenty-four seven
on a quiet street corner
beneath a glowing lamp

Maybe we’ll meet there, you
and I, when it’s all finished and done
on that little corner
of eternity

-John Berbrich