Vinnie Sarrocco, is a fixture on Seattle’s poetry scene. His first book, Poems for the Garbage Man, released in 2019, is a collection of poems written for real people. His work often juxtaposes the whimsical with the macabre realities of reckless wanderlust and prove that someone with calloused hands still has something to say.

The Moon as Understood by Skyscrapers is the second collection by young poet Vinnie Sarrocco. These poems, described by the author as being “co-written by the city of Seattle,” reflect a sense of alienation and general disaffection that is “sometimes found in big city breezes.”

Vinnie Sarrocco is from rural North Carolina and now lives in Seattle. He has spent his life working everyday jobs, in warehouses, factories, and kitchens, leaving his mind free to wander. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Coffin Bell, SPREAD, Rue Scribe, Beholder Magazine, & others.

Music City Blues

Last time I slept

we were strangers.

When the sun rises

oozing tepid rays of humanity

over East Nashville

we will be even stranger.

Our eyes lock for the first time

in the malaise of non-fiction.

No more desperate clinging to

sophomoric abstractions of freedom.

Our manifest mediocrity unmistakable.

You become possessed by

the ghosts of old antebellum street preachers

still grifting around Germantown.

I sit, the naive Protestant

in a Flannery O’Connor story.

Taking the pulpit,

your skinny chest swelling

with Bum Wisdom,

You say:

sleepin’ on the street

ain’t so bad

you lay down and it’s cold

you wake up

and it ain’t so cold

The Truth of this,

our only anchor

as we drift.