Coalinga Poetry by Walter Campbell

Carl was the poet living Coalinga, California, right near Harris Ranch, who wrote the poem in which he described his recently wed wife as “fresh and florescent as cow shit.”

You may have heard of him. Many have. But in case you haven’t, he was a very famous and well-respected poet before this incident. Poet laureate material, even.

But then he compared his wife to bovine excrement.

You can’t blame Carl, really, because he did grow up right next to Harris Ranch, in a town that perpetually smelled of cow feces. For him, cow crap was a beautiful thing that reminded him of birthday parties, fresh showers, spring mornings, midday picnics, romantic dates, and newlywed wives.

But for everyone outside Coalinga, the fact that he’d written such a thing about his wife was unbelievable.

His agent in Los Angeles scolded him. He was no longer able to sell his poems, or book him at large bookstores and colleges, so his agent dropped him like a bag of cow shit.

He and his wife went down to LA to beg the agent to take them back. In Downtown LA everyone on the street looked at Carl with complete disgust. A few even threatened to hit him.

Carl’s agent wouldn’t budge, even when Carl’s wife explained what a compliment being compared to cow shit was. Even if he could understand something so screwed up, he said, the public couldn’t. He just couldn’t make any money with Carl.

Dejected, they took a cab to Santa Monica where they passed a man on the street from Coalinga who was down at UCLA medical center getting his nasal passages repaired, and the man, upon seeing Carl and his wife, said, “Wow, your wife really is just as amazing as your poem says.”

Walter Campbell lives and works in Philadelphia, went to school in New England, and grew up in LA, but he’ll write pretty much anywhere. Recently, his work has been published in Dog Oil Press, Jersey Devil, Six Sentences, Dogzplot, Weirdyear, Vestal Review, Flashshot, Yesteryear, MicroHorror, Eclectic Flash, Toasted Cheese, Negative Suck, Horror Bound, amphibi.us, and Glossolalia.