Part standup comedy, part painfully revealing self-exploration, this is a tender, heartbreaking, hilarious book of poems about the male condition in the 21st Century.

These are poems to read and reread and then to read aloud to friends. Even nonplussed strangers will smile knowingly after being ushered into Pete McLaughlin's world, laughing at his manic, self-deprecating take on the grim horror of waking up to find yourself a divorced middle-aged dude living by yourself with a cat, one given to fits of projectile vomiting.

The poems range from a riff on the yearning of an "Angry Prius" who just wants to get out in the fast lane, one time, and drive all-out "mercilessly tailgating all comers, / even senior citizens," to the revelations of "Middle Age," about being picked up by a woman in her sixties who "plays teasing, exploratory footsie beneath the tablecloth/her unblinking green-light eyes/locked mercilessly onto mine/she winks knowingly, her big toe somehow in my pocket now."

Author: Pete McLaughlin
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Wellstone Books
Published: 12/08/2020
Pages: 140
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.10w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780960061556

About the Author
Pete McLaughlin grew up in San Francisco and was a standout runner in high school and at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, before earning his teaching credential. He was an elementary school teacher and a high school coach for years before moving to Santa Cruz, California, where he often played his trumpet alone on the bluffs looking out at the pounding Pacific.