Birds don’t stop in this town.
I see them fly past, black peppering
blue, going someplace. I’ve given up
dreaming wings. This town
will know my bones. Condoms
sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds
but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile
of those steel-eyed shrews
who linger late after church.
I walked half a day, out past the salt flats,
after they closed the movie house down. Smoked
the joint she’d brought back from college
when she returned to bury my dad.
I remember how pale her fingers lay
across my father’s hands –
coal miner’s hands, tarred like his lungs;
like this town.
…
First published in Eunoia Review, July 2016.
Winner of the Goodreads Monthly Poetry Contest, August 2016.
…
By the same author: Unburied Hatchet
Guest Post by Ryan from Days of Stone
….Ryan…. |
My name is Ryan Stone, I’m a freelance writer from Melbourne, Australia. I have no formal credentials, just an observer’s eye and an insatiable appetite for books. I’m rough around the edges but the right turn of phrase will stop me dead in my tracks every time. |
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The copyrights on the article belong to the author. The responsibility for the opinions expressed in the article belongs exclusively to the author. |
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A brilliant piece of writing.
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Yes, Ryan is a very good poet.
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Thank you so much 🙂
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