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- "Bombs and Brexit?" by Pramod Subbaraman
Acerbic Assertions by Arrogant Affluent Alcoholic Blustering Boris Blabbering about Bombs and Brexit: the same thing? Certainties Cancelled and Children Crying Caring Conservative? Please! Pramod Subbaraman is a poet from India who lives and works in the UK. He started writing during the first COVID19 lockdown and has since been published in the UK, the USA and South Africa. He favours fixed forms.
- "Exquisite Smallness" by Jesse Suess
This evening the sky craned itself into an immense tower of clouds. Its peak arched over my head to the horizon and still there was just enough room for the sun’s final sermon. Standing there alone, a captive audience of exquisite smallness, I felt the thread of shame slip its knot. Each stitch around my lungs loosened and fell into an absence that grew like a flame from my chest until even the sky caught fire and burned to black cinder and diamonds. Jesse grew up in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, but he is currently living in and exploring the woods of upstate New York. His work has been published or is forth coming in Hyacinth Review, the Montana Mouthful and the Field Guide Poetry Magazine. You can find him on twitter @suessjesse
- "Electricity" by Katrina Kaye
This gift, bestowed to you in flashes of lightning upon brittle twigs. Your father’s fist in your mother’s womb, we gave you light for the first time. Children, you took this spark and ran with it. What started as two infants warming themselves beside the fire of Eden, erupted into a string of florescence that hide the heaven man once learned to count by. You drew a line between mother Earth and father Sky with a shield of stinging light, a golden fleece covering my body from his stare. And I haven’t seen the stars in years. I missed the way your father gazed at me, embedded me in a black comfort, even before I birthed you from my seas we haven’t touched in a millennium. But I still like to look to him once in a while, reflect his eye blue skies in crystal lakes you’ve yet to soil, count the stars he scattered into the letters of my name years ago. I never thought our children would push us so far apart. We never conceived as we cradled you from crib to crawl the tear that would come between our horizons. The first time we allowed you to stay up all night, reading by candlelight. You properly thanked us by charting nebula and plotting the position of planets. You wrote an ode to your mother, stung tinsel of gold around my belly, to radiate against the fall of opaque sky. but I am no longer the center of your universe. you grew past oedipal obsession. This gift, intended to shield you from the pitch, keep the monsters at bay, warm your feet, you manifested into a weapon. You tended a minor glow, fanned your flame into a storm across my body, unstoppable, until I can no longer be seen by father’s bedroom stare. Made an artificial day of my favorite midnight. Were you jealous of the way he touched me, the lightning jagged and curl that connected us for a split second? Or was it your fear of the darkness, of the unknown, of death, that made you wish away the night’s sky. That made you think you could battle it with 24-hour convenience stores and swing shifts and nightclubs. Distracted the view of Milky Way with glowing neon. You are destined for self-destruction, Now, I never sleep, and all my gentle warnings are wearing thin. I haven’t been able to see past you in years, you’ve seeped into every sky I’m ever known, infiltrated my blackest reserves. You are too damned bright. I thought you would fill the gap between us, I wasn’t expecting you to shield him from me completely. I search for him in deserted lands far from your touch, Africa, South America, Siberia, among the open plains and mountain tops, where the night still knows secrets. Where no synthetic light will keep me up or blind me from his constellations where I can still remember the name of the creatures he conjured for my entertainment. Children, there are good things that happen in the dark, and what this mother wouldn’t give to feel father’s embrace one more time. For one moment, stop pumping your fists against your father’s nocturnal mood. We all need some time in the away from the light once in a while. It is time to put these children to bed, so this mother earth can once again be enveloped in her father sky. Take a moment, slip into slumber and don’t turn to me when I slide into your room and turn off that light, reclaiming all I gave you.
- "Banged-Up Grill" by Sy Holmes
Assistant Professor of Botany Dr. Sylvia Anderson woke me up at 2 AM and told me she had to get going. I lit a cigarette on my front step and only winced a little bit when she dinged my beat-up Civic with her truck. My mind was still too muddled up to care. Not because I was particularly drunk, but because I was confused and a bit surprised. A friend of mine once told me that the best sex of his life was a random encounter with the manager of a Cookout in Galax he had met driving back to Richmond. Said it was a complete surprise, but that man fucked like his life depended on it. I don’t know why I’m watching it snow in Laramie and thinking about two dumpy dudes getting their swerve on back in small-town Virginia. Not a whole lot in my life makes too much sense. I’ve got a busted top lip right now from a poorly-planned ice-climbing trip with some sketchy Alaskans in the Wind River range. A piece of ice hit me and banged up my grill. I was never too pretty to begin with, so this was just another one of those things. The Alaskans drove me to Riverton where the doctor stitched me up and told me I probably didn’t have any brain damage. I was just glad I didn’t break my front two fake teeth. They were the ones that Melissa, the girl I dated for a year in Philadelphia after I quit seminary, knocked out. I met her a week after I left, when I was living in a Motel 6 with only 20 bucks and the disapproval of the Blessed Mother to my name. I was charging the room to my brother’s Navy Federal card. She put me up in her house and got me a job at a record store and in the end almost broke my jaw. After that, I was too ashamed to go back to Roanoke, so I headed out west at age 21, scrawny and pale, with a job offer from the Bureau of Land Management and a vague plan that I was gonna live an interesting life. I met Lynn last season when she was hanging around the Lander office, doing research on sage ecosystems on a grant. I had just gotten back off a fire with the rest of the Rawlins helitack crew and I was sitting in the break room drinking a cup of instant coffee, half-asleep, wiping ash out of my nose, while this girl talked my ear off about bushes. Two of her undergrads eyed me nervously from the corner. One of them let off a little puff of air freshener. I liked her, but I really wished we could have run into each other about 18 hours later, when I didn’t feel like the living dead. “Where are you from, Hank?” “Southwest Virginia. Not south West Virginia, but the southwest part of regular Virginia.” “I haven't spent much time in Virginia, but I love the south. I really liked New Orleans.” “Most people do.” “The live oaks were my favorite part.” “They’re pretty neat.” “Do you do much plant identification when you’re out?” “Can’t say I do.” “That’s a shame.” “I’m just a caveman, I don't appreciate nature as much as I should.” “No, I meant maybe you could do some legwork for me. Save me some time.” She gave me her number later, when I was about to drive back and I saw her in the hallway. I kind of forgot about her, but I was living in Laramie for the winter, and I asked her if she wanted to grab a drink one day. I’m a good listener. It’s my saving grace because I’m pretty dumb. I listened to sermons growing up about the evils of the world. I listened to my priest who told all of us boys that if we really wanted to do God’s will we should forget about sex and the world and go to seminary. I listened to my roommate, who was from central Ohio, agonize about how he had kissed a boy and really liked it. I wanted to tell him that I had only kissed a girl a couple times in high school but I would pawn the chapel’s candlesticks to do it again, but I kept my mouth shut instead. I listened to Melissa kindly explain to me why I had the loss of my two teeth coming. I listen to briefings, the air attack channel, intra-crew, the division channel through the radio in my flight helmet or in the pickup. I scribble down the important parts in my Rite-In-The-Rain next to the dicks the rookies drew in there when I’ve been stupid enough to leave it lying around. I listen to waitresses bitch about work and drunk old men who want me to read them poetry at the bar. Lynn and I met at the Silver Dollar, a little dive, and she was a whole lot cooler than she had seemed in Lander. The product of sleep on both of our parts, maybe. She called me dude a lot. She was from Pennsylvania, but down in Pennsyltucky. I told her that I went to college there - a little liberal arts college around Philadelphia. I figured the whole seminary drop-out tale was a bit much for a first date. Plus, it all seemed like a life lived by another person. She told me she had just gotten out of a six-year relationship and wasn’t looking for anything serious, which bummed me out more than I expected it to. “Fighting with my fiance is really what I remember the most about New Orleans,” she said, after a couple beers. She told me I looked good with my lip split in half. She said that eventually she wanted to leave Wyoming and head somewhere less remote soon. California, maybe, or Texas. She heard Austin was cool. “I’m thinking of heading up north here sometime,” I said. “Where?” “Montana. Missoula, maybe. Got some buddies on a crew up there who want me. Better than Rawlins.” “Rawlins isn’t so bad.” “Spoken like someone who hasn’t spent much time in Rawlins.” “Montana’s cool. You ever read Lonesome Dove?” “Can’t say I have.” “It isn’t a happy book, anyway.” “I can deal with a sad book every now and then.” “Going to Montana doesn’t work out very well for them.” “Well, now you’ve ruined it.” “It’s been out for like 40 years. That’s on you.” “I meant going to Montana to escape my problems.” “Oh.” “The book, too. I’m slow on the uptake. I was a sheltered child.” “How sheltered?” “Like solidly-built double-wide sheltered.” She just laughed and we kept drinking and she started touching my leg under the bar and I knew we were getting on the road. We went back to my place. I remember her lying on my queen bed, the teenage-girl bed frame I had bought off my landlady with sheets I hadn’t changed in weeks and a dirty comforter. She looked like some sort of high plains orchid in the light filtering in from my neighbor’s house. Pale and naked with a bandana around her neck. I held her and slept until she woke me up and said she felt sober enough to drive, and then she left. I smoked my cigarette in the January cold. I went inside and felt the old loneliness, like it had never happened, except my sheets smelled like her and she left a pair of earrings on the dresser. I don’t go on many dates. I don’t talk to many people. As soon as she left I wanted her back, wanted her in the animal way that comes on too hot and too soon. Wanted to buy a house and settle down. Knew that she knew I would get too attached. Knew that this might be the last time I ever saw her. Knew that this wouldn’t work out. Knew it in my soul with the kind of fatalism that always comes over me when things go too well. Like the penultimate acts of old crime movies. That the money’s going to be gone and the cops’ll close in, or, as close as it gets, the main character is still going to bite it. But without the high stakes because this was just another white-trash hookup. But maybe the good things will actually happen. Maybe the next climbing trip won’t land me in the hospital. Maybe Missoula will make me feel less blue all the time. Maybe she won’t decide that she’s through with me in the morning. Who knows. Anything’s possible. But I doubt it. Sy Holmes is an author from western North Carolina. He lives in the mountain West with other people's dogs.
- "I wake up tired and sore", "By Candlelight" & "Rabbit" by Jason Melvin
I wake up tired and sore and often soaked in sweat I don’t remember being awake or any dreams I may have had but I’m usually more tired then when I went to sleep They say it takes ten years and four rheumatologists to get a proper diagnosis it’s been twenty and five but who’s counting when I open my eyes I realize I can’t open my mouth without pain in my jaw What else could cause this other than a punch? The doctors take my blood and shrug their shoulders I’d shrug my shoulders too but it hurts when I try My legs are so sore I feel as if I was chasing or being chased My knuckles are swollen and it hurts to bend my fingers they offer pills that don’t work that make me more tired when I’m barely functioning There is one logical conclusion that really holds no logic at all but it gets me through the day After I close my eyes to sleep I fight crime or aliens or masterminded villains Slip into another dimension where I must be a goddamn superhero More Batman than Superman I doubt the man of steel wakes up sore plus, I hope I can’t fly If I can fly but don’t remember it that’s some royal bullshit It’s nice to know when I close my eyes I’m destined to hand out some vigilant justice makes the struggle a little bit more rewarding *sidenote* Considering, I wake every morning feeling as if I got my ass kicked, a friend points out there is a good possibility I’m the villain. Sadly There’s logic here By candlelight The wind stole out the light we pull the curtains to invite in the last of gray daylight we three wife, daughter and me play Rummy by candlelight Christmas Wish Christmas at the Beach Aromatic Evergreen infused with Orange You Had Me at Merlot candles placed throughout the living room my daughter says it smells like puke in here the game ends quickly they go to bed notebook on the table pen in hand I watch the candle wicks flicker You Had Me at Merlot cavorts spasmodically the flame moves swishes as if outside caught in the damaging winds I was caught once in a wind that stood still on a train bridge with a friend a train traveling south displaced us to the northbound tracks until a northbound train captured that space Twelve to fifteen feet between both trains traveling at a good clip The swirled wind made visible by t-shirts and hair dancing we felt nothing heard no sounds all sensation caught in a vacuum senses trapped twisted to feel the sound but not hear it see the wind but not feel it I bounced a fist-sized stone off the side of a boxcar Its silent voice echoed through us our faces twisted in surprise and laughter The wind outside is loud frightening and stole the light The candle flame dances and moves to a soundless music Rabbit the Rose of Sharon blooms closed shop for the night pink rolled-up tootsie rolls tonight every night You emerge from beneath its branches as my feet leave the pavement as they lick the damp grass You emerge repudiating instinct to scurry the sensible choice of your brethren your species In life you were a lion but a lion couldn’t live beneath the branches of an overgrown Rose of Sharon A lion would frighten a boy slightly fearful of the dark fearful of the life without his father I know it’s you I know it’s you
- "Wish I Were Here" by Penny Sarmada
I must have that kind of face: everywhere I go people always stop me for directions I tell tourists how to get to Kensington Market for wild blueberry pie, vintage bags and ganja, workman’s clothes and secondhand guitars and the reggae, the djembe, the flaming gay parade and ugli fruit in the Marcus Garvey sweltering summer. I tell them it’s Spa-DYNA not Spa-DEENA and if anyone asks me 你能給我指路嗎? I can point the way I must look like someone who knows south from east and where the streetcars stop and where there’s a good place for cheap vegan lunch though I am detached, a hovering illusion watching over Augusta Ave like a billboard with floodlit smiles for a Vietnamese dental clinic because there’s nowhere else I come from and nowhere else to go When you’re lost inside there is no screaming red arrow on a map >>> YOU ARE HERE! When you’re a broken flower that’s lost its scent, nectar drained and pollen strewn, you no longer attract the honey bee, you pick through the fallen petals, crumpled, torn and purple bruised and maybe the remnants of trail will lead you back home
- "nobody ever got slapped over my alopecia", "next time i will just let it fly"...by J. Archer Avary
nobody ever got slapped over my alopecia punked on april fools day caught up in the monkeyshines of my aspirational barber joelinton’s barber i booked my appointment for the most anticipated haircut since my hair grew back from stress-induced alopecia still in recovery, me from the rudeness of strangers from inappropriate staring comments like ‘you need a better barber’ and ‘what kind of cancer is that, bro’ yes, it bothered me not enough to slap a man, tho truth be told maybe i’m the foolish one ‘cos this tidbit proper boils my piss at ten a.m. sharp, standing outside the barbershop ten thousand monkeys in my fist looking for a bitch to slap but the joke was me next time i will just let it fly I pulled my intercostal muscle pre-drinking for the football match over too-small margaritas with not enough tequila waiting on pork enchiladas from a too-slow kitchen. I considered my physical need to sneeze in a post-pandemic restaurant versus the social fallout of such a spectacle. I don’t even know these people, but they are human beings and deserve not to be sprayed at close range with someone else’s aerosols. the sneeze came on hard but I shut it down, sparing some nuns and their triple-cheese nachos a blast of sputum through no small feat of physical exertion. I am not a young man anymore. unable now to absorb the brute force of unrequited energy with my porous ribcage. the pain remains, sharp but tolerable. I feel it in the night when I’m sleeping or when I cough, or blow my nose that persistent throbbing deep in my core. when it’s healed I will still feel the ache like an echo in a warehouse, taking up the empty space. the less you know the better you sleep Vladimir Putin in judo bathrobe all smirk and tinkle riding on his high horse sidesaddle to Dresden because all roads lead to Dresden when all you read is Vonnegut you should be here now in this karaoke bar where the bright-eyed dictator sings blueberry hill to captive air-hostesses with veneered smiles hair in shellacked buns standby as we plunge headfirst into a new world order of Flipper songs in TV commercials Salvador Dali in a car chase on the San Marino freeway singing LIFE is the only thing worth living for and when nothing is left we find ourselves begging for an ounce of common decency J. Archer Avary once broke a hand in a hot tub accident. That’s all you need to know to understand the process behind his Pushcart nominated poetry. Twitter: @j_archer_avary
- "Broken Toys", "Way We've Always Been"...by Scott Cumming
Broken Toys I blamed myself for every broken toy Back when I was a kid And now I find out how fucked up that was How a brain skewers a person As I attempt not to cry into the webcam. Way We’ve Always Been There is an ungraspable sting to seeing unloved personality traits in your children Knowing you’ve never figured out ways to dampen your impatience The beauty of their faces shines like beacons even through crowds of kids I wonder how their features will change figuring I’ll still see them this way For how many generations is this how we’ve behaved? Who were the wordsmiths among my ancestry? Immigrants two generations removed Earned the rights of restless natives now Facsimiles of people gone before with different last names and places to call home I call you two home Try as I might I can’t help but get frustrated that the attention lavished cannot meet the amount craved Know too well the time will come when I’m banished as nothing more than an embarassment. The Things Easily Forgotten Feel a hand Ripping at the base of your heart and the pit of your stomach The dozen of us asking The same unanswerable question What more we could’ve done for someone who didn’t want the help We drink to the best of us The sweetest and kindest Who yearned for the things we have Even when he possessed So much more than we could imagine Tonight, we are each other’s Emotional support peacocks Clinging with laughter and tears to the side of the cargo hold Remembering things easily forgotten Conjuring useless memories That we never wanted to keep No use for the internet Except endless trivial queries Carefully worded To navigate algorithms Steering us through a perceived life The beginning of a life Truly is the easy part Reconciling an end So bitter, so early Unwarranted the hardest part Forgiving yourself In the face of death Takes a lifetime to do. Scott Cumming unsuspectingly went to see Garden State wearing his Shins tee. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Versification, Mystery Tribune and Shotgun Honey. His poem, “Blood on Snow”, was voted the best of Outcast Press Poetry Things We Carry issue and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection, A Chapbook About Nothing, was released in December as part of Close to the Bone's First Cut series. Twitter: @tummidge Website: https://scottcummingwriter.wordpress.com/
- "Small Black Rose" by David Hay
The beauty of your peace, makes the boarders of the horizon recede into nothingness, and the mind crippled by its own weight is released into a deepening reverence with the stars made holy by a grief all too human. The evening with its melody sweet and tortuous swallows the burgeoning self and with fitful transcendence illuminates the worm besieged heart, voiceless and numb. Despair is alleviated by the steady current of your voice that carries birds and translucent clouds into the growing web of night, that heeds not boarder nor recognises name. Let senses be dumb, let eternity subdue with drops of quietness upon our brows. Let death be accepted; nurtured from the beginning and all our finite moments free from history’s engravings be glorified. David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.
- "That Blush Over The Rooftops" by Sherry Cassells
I learned to draw from my neighbour Harp we called him, although his name was Greg, but by the time he moved in across the street, the name Greg was taken by my baby brother who I wanted to call Max because of Get Smart but it didn’t work out. Harp stayed on his driveway and drew with chalk which he also ate and I howled to my mother he’s eating the chalk again and all she howled back was I know when I was expecting a solution. Among other things, I wondered about the colour of his poo and its buoyancy but when I got to know him, one step at a time, I saw that he was only licking the chalk so as to achieve a thicker, bolder, more meaningful stroke. I knew right away Harp was drawing at me and I watched through my bedroom window but this was the60s and suburban neighbourhoods were new and important so my mother hauled me out of the house and pushed me without being obvious about it across the street. I shook myself loose on the road just before Harp’s driveway and she kept on going, on the grass because Harp’s expression went like The Scream when her foot hovered over his canvas. Harp’s mother opened the door and my mother twirled inside and Harp put himself in a chalk box and I rode my bike up and down the street, all the houses except ours still under construction. All he drew were stripes everybody thought but I knew they were trees because, like I said, they were aimed at me and I saw the trees become forests so dense and secret like gnarled fairy tales until it rained and they were gone forever in a beautiful pale path of residue that lined our street always. We’d recently made plaster of paris hands at school for Mother’s Day gifts, gruesome things chopped at the wrist, and my mother put mine on her dresser so it looked like I was crouched inside, my exposed hand offering rubber bands, change, thumbtacks, bobby pins. There had been leftover chunks of the plaster – forearms and elbows, broken thumbs, knuckles and other appendages – and we pocketed the bits and after school a bunch of us drew all over the pavement. I made the letter m that looked like a bird one way and a bum the other, while braver kids spelled s-h-i-t and f-u-c-k. I went to the store sometimes with a note, for cigarettes or bread mostly, and one time I asked Mr. Wilkes if he had plaster of paris and he hauled out a big bag and I hauled it home in the carrier of my bike, my front wheel very wobbly. My mother yelled at me but I told her I wanted to make chalk for Harp and she stirred while I searched the house for shapes and we poured the lovely smooth goo into greased tin cans, cracker boxes lined with stretch and seal, paper towel tubes, toys. The food colouring was her idea and when I gave the big box to Harp, all the shapes and colours like pieces of broken castles, his blue chalky lips smiled. After the next rain when he drew his box he made the line at the base of his driveway dotted and I was allowed in. He let me populate the forest with birds and lizards. He pointed out swirls of chalk with pavement eyes and I gathered them into monsters. When his mother made us matching red capes, I introduced miniature Supermen into the forest, their horizontal capes like gashes. He watched like I was on TV while I rode my bike up and down the street my cape bubbling behind me. Eventually I got him through the dots and turned out he wasn’t so afraid as long as we went one step at a time. He started to talk about the same time my little brother Greg did and his ideas were far bigger than mine, maybe because they’d been hidden for so long I don’t know, but sometimes they were too big for words and he’d draw them instead, on paper with blue cartridge pen which blobbed sometimes and he’d hand the page to me so I could turn the blobs into monsters. Everybody got greedy when our trees got huge and there was a housing boom in established neighbourhoods. We sold our house and Harp’s family sold theirs. We kept in touch for a long time me and Harp. Last I heard he was a pilot up north, the crop duster kind, with a side hustle as sky writer and that’s what I think of when the sky is pink in the morning, like maybe it’s Harp’s beautiful residue again. Sherry is from the wilds of northern Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. thestoryparade.ca
- "Thunder Sound" & "Crab Shell" by Sarah M. Lillard
Thunder Sound I grew up with thunder, lightning, with klaxon warnings to take shelter. Reaping whirlwinds for sowing heat, humidity, electric layers of air. Thunder that awakened at deep dark midnight. Thunder with sunrise veiled by wicked clouds. Thunder in choleric March snows. I heard thunder boom like dropped artillery, crack like a savage whip, rumble like an ancient rite. 🙒🙒🙒 I never heard thunder roll until we moved to California. It ricocheted off low mountains to playful ocean, from stout redwoods to flaring seaside bonfires. They said we brought thunder with us; before we came no storm split the sky. Disapproving powers made protest. Angry titans warred against our plans to stay. Far from compelling our retreat, their strivings put us at ease— thunder made familiar an unknown place. Thunder welcomed us home. Crab Shell I’ll dig up a cork-screw hermit crab shell. I’ll carry delights, discoveries— my burden of joy in the spindly-sure spiral. On my back, ever ready to shelter— always able to bear. Outside forces hold no dread for me. Internal distractions succumb to helix-hard constraint. The twist-tight innards of my moveable home— packed with every bright ornament I collect; nothing beautiful escapes my notice— nothing attendant is ignored. I scoop up particularities no one seems to see. They feed my love for this world— small, weighty things. Sarah M. Lillard is a writer living in northern Virginia. Her poetry has appeared in Black Bough Poetry, The Hellebore, and Nightingale & Sparrow.
- "Taking, Care" & "Sip-soaked" by K Weber
Taking, Care I was in the squares of Savannah, moon eyed and just-wed, honey-sunned, while relatives plucked my grandmother’s best things and flowers. After the funeral, before the big auction, familial teeth and their twice removed seething emerged in Ohio, gnawing the valuables faster than her cancer; beautiful objects and meaning sinking into the stomachs of their hungriest pockets. I returned on Thursday from the squares of Savannah, still shaded by October’s magnolia and southern live oak memories. I was a new wife missing the closest still-married family member. There was ease in our many midwestern days. I had to pick from an upheaval of leftovers, her once-loved possessions. I took the angel, the quilt. I grabbed LIFE magazines, writing paper, and slim books I’d never see her read. I missed the chance to rescue her heavy, most grandfatherly clock that clicked our time together while the pendulum hypnotized like rhythm of rain or rocking chair on our quiet after-church afternoons. I hear it even decades later in my umpteenth wave of second-hand grief. When I was in Savannah I absorbed each museum, riverwalk, and ghost. I was voracious: sneaking sand into my back pocket from Tybee Island; handfuls of Spanish moss slipped into my purse at the green and gray Bonaventure Cemetery. Sip-soaked Too much headwine and now our glarey stares: every clever rereverie sweat-glassed and fog-wet. Whose move now? Memory has strayed like a loose hen. Let’s go to bedlam. I love hate you in the way that you are in the way. Wake up to rooster-sad crowcrying. K Weber is an Ohio poet who has self-published 6 online poetry book projects. These are free in PDF and audio formats. Her projects, writing and photo credits, and more can be found at http://kweberandherwords.wordpress.com