In Keith Kumasen Abbott’s comic novel Mordecai of Monterey a character by the name of the Widow Lazarchuk is presented. Knowing that Keith often inserted his friends into his novels, I looked up the name Lazarchuk and came to the conclusion that the Widow Lazarchuk was a bit of a “wink” towards the punk rock poet Michael-Sean Lazarchuk. Here I read three poems by Michael-Sean Lazarchuk.

As the poet Pat Nolan recalls: “Lazarchuk stood six foot two or three, taller in his heavy metal rock’n’roll platform shoes. He wore his long blondish hair in a quasi-mullet shag that was distinctly LA rocker. Add a Fu Machu moustache and Michael-Sean was a rather forbidding presence.”