Jon Riccio | The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse

The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse by Jon Riccio. Number 31 in our Robin Becker Series, selected by series editor Steve Bellin-Oka.

[ cover photo by Larry Racioppo, “Pharmacy, 2nd Floor, Office and Lab Building, Ellis Island” (1997) ]

“Jon Riccio’s collection, The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse, is an internal world fully realized, a queer epiphany. Through these vivid poems of imagined place, I step through a portal—historical, commercial, virtual, fanciful. As a reader in this landscape of the broken, I find myself back in my own gay childhood—grappling with the bully at the bus stop, leaning on the sister protector, loving and dreading the retired mimes I call mother and father. From his poem, ‘Queer Southern, View of Beef Plant Ramp’—I’m more deviant / than I come across with my plastic spoons / and almond milk, my representation button jammed / on repress . . . This chapbook is a magic show, a carnival, a stroll through halls of a purged brothel. Riccio is ventriloquist with extra knuckles, moon of a late-night talk show, the softness of his voice / untethered of its frame. The poems are a conjuration of vowels, the mastery of O, holes lassoing alfredo: an extraordinary read.”

—Robert Carr, author of Phallus Sprouting Leaves

Publication:  November 14, 2024 [100 copies]
25 pages
ISBN 978-1-960693-18-1
$ 12.00

Jon Riccio‘s publications include the full-length collection Agoreography and two chapbooks, Prodigal Cocktail Umbrella and Eye, Romanov. He serves as poetry editor at Fairy Tale Review and in various roles at 1-Week Critique, Taos Journal of Poetry, The Night Heron Barks, and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. 

Kerosene

As a fire eater, you will never go unemployed.

Your windpipe determines retirement.

Ember jaws, spark gums; the physical is glamorous.

Come April Fool’s Day, the lighter-fluid dunk tank.

Do you remember Joe “Stilt Ankles” Mikelson?

Well, now he runs the Kissimmee circus scene

With his fiancé Carol, Ms. Spinning Plates.

You, who were raised on three-syllable commands:

Somersault. Abrogate. Genuflect.

The perfect Jesuit acrobat.

If you’re lucky, you’ll meet the ventriloquist with extra knuckles.

Your bellows. His teeth.

Lord knows where that could lead.