Gen X Redux

poems by

David Colodney

~100 pages, $16 (+ shipping)

Projected Release Date: May/June 2026

An Advance Sale Discount price of $9.50 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $14.50/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. This price only applies to orders shipped within the US.

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

David Colodney is the author of the chapbook Mimeograph (Finishing Line Press, 2019). A Best of the Net and three-time Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in multiple journals. He holds an MFA from Converse University and an MA from Nova Southeastern University. David has written for The Miami Herald and The Tampa Tribune, where he covered everything from prep sports to major league baseball. He currently serves as an associate editor of South Florida Poetry Journal. David has three sons and lives in Boynton Beach, Florida with his wife. An ardent supporter of Liverpool Football Club, he can often be found at the Lion and Eagle Pub watching their matches.

David Colodney’s Gen X Redux is a wisely hilarious look at a life through the lens of pop culture and politics, a sweet poetry mixtape of childhood Formica. Of crushes of all kids. Of divorce and blended families. Of high school and high school reunions. Of the deaths of legends and family members. Beneath his poetry’s glittery surface and dazzling range of form, Colodney commemorates our wounds as well as our gratitude. ~Denise Duhamel

This debut is, simply put, very cool. Physical and emotional landscapes with electric lyrical play—the poems reverberate. You’ll care deeply for these speakers because this book evokes our shared humanity: obsessions, hopes, failures. in “When you’re a Springsteen song but she only listens to Dashboard Confessional,” he writes: “She strolls into your life, a summer kiss…the two of you destined to battle over who says goodbye first.” Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious—I highly recommend.
~Erica Dawson, author of When Rap Spoke Straight to God

Gen X Redux

I
& we thought the saddest day of our lives would be the day REM broke up but then we buried
parents siblings & friends suffered divorces & bankruptcies & lived lives

II
let’s drive up an on-ramp in the wrong gear & I’ll show you a place I’ve never lived/ let me imagine hills quiver when the stick shift sticks in a hotwired Corolla & let’s laugh as we roll back with each stubborn thrust forward stunted by expectations & the feeling of gravity’s pull

III
& our grandfathers fought World War II & dragged us to the post office to register for the draft
in case of World War III/ told us Reagan won’t start a war (probably) & I just wanted to watch MTV &

IV
the grandsons & granddaughters of the greatest generation set out to change the world/ struggled with eating disorders in dark corners never thinking global & acting local like our bumper stickers promised

V
& we drank first-generation Diet Coke & New Coke & listened to Kajagoogoo & the Valley rain pelt the glass of our first cars/ each bead peeling off a chip of chassis where even too shy shy shy
we kissed our first girls & first boys & not our last as dome lights dimmed

VI
Wait… what?

VII
& it was the end of the world as we knew it & I felt kind of shitty if I’m being honest here & I was pissed my dad died of cancer the same week Kurt Cobain killed our generation off with selfish shots of bourbon & gunfire

VIII
we made mixtapes of songs we liked for girls we liked & boys we liked to express feelings we weren’t sure we liked telling them they had lips like sugar when others’ words spoke clearer than ours like when we lost our religion & weren’t sure we ever wanted to find it

IX
& find me doubled over in the Blue Anchor’s parking lot at closing time blacktop glistening under a turpentine moon & a drizzle thickening & happy hour three-for-ones regurgitate as murky texts typed in a shaky Uber home & I delete them like junk mail & boredom

X
& I set out to change the world but couldn’t find my way with a map & where are my car keys anyway & REM broke up & it wasn’t the saddest day of my life/ I just stood alone for an hour & breathed minor chords off a plate of dusty sky
&

Letter to Michael Pare After Finding Streets of Fire on Hulu

Michael, tell me why life does this. Why I stop to notice raindrops that plop to the pavement outside the shell of the old Surf Theater & each drop sounds like a phone call from my past, faint echoes of the lost voices of FM radio deejays as their smooth growls fade to static. Of course, I stop to consider each one, try to configure their story, and mine, narrator of my own plot. And the old theatre, marquee now splashing CVS instead of the name of some Hollywood blockbuster, once hangout now metaphor. On the screen I can see you when Eddie and the Cruisers hit theaters. I was clueless, wandering like teens do, 19 and stuck in between, not child, not ripe, an unfolding libertine. When Streets of Fire debuted the next year, I saw it here too, and was sure you shared my obsessions with Springsteen, Morrison, too, holding shadows of both in your shaman walk and Seventeen-approved hair. I guess two years on top are more than most get. Warhol dished out 15 minutes, not enough time to find a rerun of Houston Knights on Netflix. Life does this, but I don’t know why. Back to 19: it’s a bloody age. That summer a kid who graduated with me rode his motorcycle into a tree and flung slingshot until he landed on the hood of a passing car right after we’d seen The Philadelphia Experiment, a different role for you. We killed a summer here, drifting through the cigarette-smoke glossed movie screens of Saturday matinees unraveling Eddie Wilson’s mystery before drowning our futures in convenience store wine. How does anyone die at 19? Speed our Kryptonite, I guess, once invincible turned invisible. Tell me why life does this. Tell me why when Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! came out six years later, I’d forgotten you. Your cool side-mouth mumble still punctuated your stone-faced monotone, but Eddie was still running wild in sweaty Jersey nights, and I had a degree and a job and left bloody 19 behind like the silver slow roll of movie-ending credits. Tell me why your filmography is long, but your tally of awards is short. Tell me why life does this. Tell me why the rain seems to fall harder when the plot thickens, each drop a story with narration and action, and tell me why one day the phone stops ringing with offers. Just wondering if you could let me know and w/b/s.

No Vacancy

As vacant as beach hotels in rainy season,
I stand facing you, your stormy eyes dark,
slow dancing in circles under milky clouds.
Like jalousie windows in those lonely rooms
that don’t crank closed completely,
I’m a flashing neon sign, a skeleton
under an opaque sky, exposed by each word
before we talk the same small talk we always talk.
When you say more words I don’t want to hear
I kiss you as the moonlight turns searchlight
zeroing in on two raw x-rays. On the phone
vibrating in your purse, the phone you never
let me see, is your husband calling,
asking when you’ll be home.

Biscayne Bay Lies Still, Like Glass

My father is buried a few miles north of this place:
where Biscayne Bay oozes against asphalt
and boats drift from marina to bay to sunset.
Latin music and multilingual chit-chat blends,
a symphony in cacophony.

On another anniversary of his death, I walk, beer
in hand sweating droplets back to my elbows.
I’ve lived most of my life a few miles east of this place.
To the west, people live under bridges.

My father always loved how Miami looks on TV:
pastel glamor, glistening hodge-podge of twinkling
lights. Neon bouncing off the skyline, a relay
from building to building to building,
dusky electricity under glitzy skies.

My beer is nearly drained. I peer south
over a railing and ask the water if I died here,
would I have died happy? The water offers
no advice, doesn’t even meander.
In this place: the water lies still like glass.