behind, behind, behindkeep running, you’ll never catch upthe years have already passed you by, little girlno sense in breaking your legs to catch up with themlay down on the ground and cry your pretty little eyes outaccept your defeat and stop your whiningthis is the hand that God has dealt youdon’t ask questions about his…
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On this walk, as with all days,I move,until the moon,usurps the sun.The songs of life ongoing,do their best, to fill the barren space,you once occupied.Is it hubris,to say, you are the best there ever was.Daydreams of our eleventh hour,what I could have articulated, differently.How life could change so irrevocably in your absence.Why the sun burns…
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“Peas””It’s a little past noon and church let out half an hour ago, the second service. The eight o’clock service is a little too early for fire and brimstone or the exaggerations of Revelations. That’s what Dad says, even though he didn’t come for the late service either. He hasn’t come with me and Mom…
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“Dats right, genius,” muttered Jeckles, flicking his cigar ash onto the gravel. “We iz a dyin breed, we iz.” From the lawn chair beside his Winnebago, Jeckles eyed the bloody sun slipping down into the thin pines ringing the fairground lot. A red-and-white greasepaint target stretched across his sagging jowls. From his Yankees cap,…
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A ray of sun strikes the copper’s badge and bounces off, lighting up the voting box inside H. L. Drugstore in me South Bronx neighborhood. Now washed and mended, I wear the same once-blood-splattered and mud-stained dress, patched at the cuff, tattered ‘round the collar. It shows the scars from when we marched down…
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Maybe rain was comingin torrents, or snowpiled up outside the meagerlean-to the day maninvented fire.Maybe his legs were brokenfrom a fall down the sideof an icy mountain.The woman dragged himto his pine-bough bed.Confined, cold and hungry,he complained as the womannursed their insatiable babe. He drummed two sticksagainst a log to the cadenceof the baby’s sucking,rubbed…
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there is a short list of things you want right now:rest, comfort,a hand pressed against the small of your backpeace, rapture. but not the kind of rapture folks dream ofno final redemption hereno explosive joyjust his body next to yours it’s funny, you’ve decidedthat you seek rapture in the most sinful of kisseshis lips against…
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what if the velvet curtains startedweepingwhat if the marble statue lifted herfingertips to her cheekwhat if the piano held a lowB flat and wouldn’t letit gowhat if each stone of the diamond necklacesoftened and turnedback into coal. when the woman locked in theyellow wallpaperpushed aside the barsand leapt out into the hallwhen the thumping heartbeneath…
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Is darkness onlyAbsence of lightOr individual personaA personal night. Does it gather at duskAnd retreat at dawnOr is it a twenty-four hourCloud that is drawnA personal darknessPersonal absence of light? No amount of sunCan ease the frightOf not knowingIf anyone’s home. Do you see meAre you entirely alone? Tom Corboy is a retired airline pilot…
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