April 15, 2024

National Poetry Month 2024: 5 Poems by Charles Rammelkamp

Posted by Malik White in Member Writing & Art, Writing

We continue this week in NPM with another frequent contributor, Charles Rammelkamp. This collection of Charles’ poems will take you on a narrative journey through the eyes of an interesting and very notable character. Cab Driver Of all the people to almost run over! Anybody else, I’d have shrugged an apology, been on my way back home to Baltimore. I’d come to the intersection of H Street and Jackson Place, maybe took the corner too sharp, veering in toward the curb, but I didn’t hit him, didn’t even come close to running Coolidge over! But then the secret service guy, a different one from the one who grabbed Cal’s arm, jumped onto my running board, startled the hell out of me. “Who are you?” I demanded. “A secret service agent.” He called over to a street cop, had me arrested, charged me with cutting corners, failing to give the right…

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February 23, 2022

“Peter Roget,” Poems by Charles Rammelkamp

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Little Red Man My minister father composed sermons. My uncle praised their “taste and elegance”: a word man long before me. Son of a Geneva clockmaker, mon pere, Jean Roget – “little red man,” from the French rouge – immigrated to London at 24 to become pastor at Le Quarré, the French Protestant church in Soho. Papa preached in the little Huguenot church on Little Dean Street, a few blocks north of St. James’s, the colossus near Piccadilly Circus, Christopher Wren’s  largest church – where I was christened in 1779. Papa’d married Catherine Romilly a year before, in St. Marleybone Church, welcomed into their family without reservation. My uncle, Samuel, rhapsodized about our happiness, “as complete as is ever the portion of human beings,” but only months after my birth, Papa was “seized with an…

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September 20, 2020

“Frank Olson” — The Poetry of Charles Rammelkamp

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Frank Olson “Webber,” my editor barked when I walked into the office that day just after Thanksgiving, 1953. “I want you to look into this story about the CIA guy who jumped out of the tenth floor window at the Statler, on Seventh Avenue. Why did he do it? Could he have been he pushed?” My beat? CIA, MK-ULTRA, “mind-control” drugs. Brainwashing. I knew about Frank Olson already; worked at Camp Dietrich in Maryland, Special Ops, an aerosol expert, his specialty “airborne distribution of biological germs.” Worked on Operation Sea Spray a couple year earlier, where they released a dust that floated like anthrax, near San Francisco. At Dietrich, he directed experiments that involved gassing and poisoning lab animals. “I’ll look right into it, sir,” already booking a flight and hotel in my mind, thinking,…

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June 25, 2019

Charles Rammelkamp: History, Politics, and People

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

The Crud My mother called him “the crud,” my brother’s friend Alan. I’m not sure what she had against him, besides his lack of ambition – she was a schoolteacher, after all – Alan destined to work in one of the steel factories after graduating from high school – at least until the steel factories all closed. The Crud loved cars. He could tell you the make and model and year of anything with four wheels and an engine, sported decals of hotrods and muscle cars all over his school folders. He did speak vaguely of “joining the service,” as his older brother had, then having all his teeth pulled, dentures installed in their place, the stubby twisted teeth in his mouth, a source of private anguish. When my brother mentioned…

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April 11, 2023

Week Two: AJ Huffman, Morouje Sherif, Charles Remmelkamp

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Writing

We’re so delighted to welcome A. J. Huffman and her poetry to Fictional Cafe. A.J. is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has published 27 collections and chapbooks of poetry. In addition, she has published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She is currently the editor for Kind of a Hurricane Press literary journals. Two Boards Don’t Always Equal An X I wear his depression for hours.  Like a crown of duller thorns, it does not bleed me.  But breeds a bizarre dissension.  I understand the gray it is shading. Around my edges it appears.  Colder than his.  He shudders. Mistaking the chill for lore.  It is not your soul leaving your body. I sigh.  (It is my soul trying to breathe.)  You worry I am not strong/safe/alive enough to hold you.  You are wrong (Such…

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January 14, 2021

“The Color of Jadeite,” by Eric D. Goodman: A Review

Posted by Mike Rochester in Book Reviews

Editor’s Note: Being in the publishing industry, I’m fortunate to regularly meet talented writers and artists. It is sometimes an instant connection and other times a bit of serendipity. In the case of Eric D. Goodman, it was the latter. A year ago, we published a novel excerpt by Eric, called “Traffic Report,” from Setting the Family Free about a horde of animals unleashed on an Ohio town. A few months later, we published a collection of poems by Charles Rammelkamp and I got to chatting with Charles. While looking up his forthcoming novel, Catastroika, I noticed a familiar name. It seems that Eric had written a blurb for a review of Catastroika. Intrigued, I reached out to both authors and found out that they were actually longtime friends from Baltimore! What’s even more interesting…

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