Visit of Patrick Kelly
Tuesday, February 2
Clean Shorts
Patrick Kelly visited us in
He arrived on a Trailways bus with a Nikon F camera,
a can of beer in a paper sack with a straw in it, and
an Icelandic Airlines AWOL bag with clean socks
and an extra pair of shorts, one presumes. Although
he didn’t bathe in the two days he was with us.
He drank beer and watched old movies on TV
while we were at the site, digging. He had published
a recipe from Raw Energy: A Cookbook for Action Painters
in Blue Horse, the Southern Cooking issue. My first appearance
in print, if you don’t count self-published pamphlets or one poem
in Apalachee Quarterly. He had worked on the NOLA Express
with Robert Head and Darlene Fife and knew Charles Bukowski.
I used a drawing he did of me, Harpies dropping shit on my head,
on the cover of Evil Genius, and a drawing of me leaving
the Okaloosa County Skid Mark, on the cover of Screed.
