Paul Bergstraesser
Ron Taco
You’d think he’d be vaguely something
but Ron Taco wasn’t vaguely anything.
He was just Ron Taco, everything anatomically
correct including our neighborhood.
The outtakes: a carport attached to his house,
a Corvette Stingray, bellbottoms that today
people write songs about and an above-ground
pool where the rule was jean shorts, no tops.
You’d think Ron Taco was only a summer creature
and you’d be right. Rumors of rabbits dangling
by their feet for backyard archery, 100 steps
removed from the lightning bugs pressed to our
earlobes as nighttime jewelry. But everything is
rumor, from the brothers who’d kiss just about
anything to Ron Taco as an Olympian, dying in a
shootout with police, mail ordering a bride to
poems as more than placeholders, as more than
markers for memory which writhes and writhes,
spinning and twitching at the end of a rope.
Paul Bergstraesser was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2012. In addition, he has had fiction published in Another Chicago Magazine, The Barcelona Review, Other Voices, The Portland Review, Stone's Throw, and Thin Air. My nonfiction has been published in Sojourn. At present, I teach creative writing and literature at University of Wyoming.