Marriage. Parenthood. Vice. The promise of Honey I’m Home got me hooked from the start: divorce. Abandonment. Enforced chastity.
I was promised love; I gingerly opened the book, in search of despair. What I found was the angst and faded glory of middle-age-spread open manhood, in odes such as “Saturday Afternoon at the Home Depot”:
A middle-aged man eyes a drill bit / With a leer he saves for beautiful women.
“Sawdust and testosterone,” the author continues. And so it goes. Page after page of Honey I’m Home-sometimes witty, clever and sharp as a new skill saw blade, other times falling flat as a buttermilk pancake-is an homage to the middle-aged man. Out of shape, lazy, lousy, balding and hairy in all the wrong places and disinterested in life, love and beauty found anywhere but in the neighbour’s much greener grass. (Andr�e Lachapelle)
Poetry Chapbook, Nathan Graziano, $5, sunnyoutside, P.O. Box 441429, Somerville, MA, 02144, U.S.A.