"Isolation Street", "This Morning’s Playlist", and "Involuntary Actions" by Brady Riddle

Isolation Street

A half-smoked cigarette dangles

from idle fingers

on a shadowed stoop

returned from the empty corner bar

where one watered-down drink

pushed him away

he stands planted

a tree in concrete

gazing across an asphalt plain

not in defiance, just

there

he wants to soak in an antique, claw-footed bathtub like the

ones in photographs

for the steam, for the warm embrace

but is afraid it may engulf him

like the deep end of a swimming pool –

He can’t swim.

He meanders down an unlit sidewalk

five blocks to the silhouetted beach

to let curling ocean lips

kiss his feet.

This Morning’s Playlist

I hear the songs that people sing,

truth so true it hurts my bones.

I’ve felt the dust in their mouths, and

wash away that same dirt burying their dead.

Truth so true it hurts my bones

resonates like heartbeats I no longer hear,

one of many echoes waking me in darkness.

I’ve felt the dust in their mouths and

had no other choice but to choke it all down like

so many words I could have said, but couldn’t

wash away that same dirt burying their dead

with water or water turned to wine. The only miracle:

hearing these truths I know I hold.

Involuntary Actions

Brady Riddle currently resides in Shanghai, China, where he teaches secondary English at Shanghai American School. He is also the literary editor for A Shanghai Poetry Zine. Brady has been a featured poet and presenter at writers' conferences and poetry festivals from Houston, Texas to Muscat, Oman to Beijing, China. Most recently, Brady’s work can be found in A Shanghai Poetry Zine and Alluvium in Shanghai, China; Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine in Hong Kong; Prospectus: A Literary Offering in the US; and Rat’s Ass Review in the US.