Tag: poetry
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Drought Town
This is the summer of red dust. Everything sucked dry—hollow as cicada husks, wedged under eaves and porch stairs—waiting for a wind change. On the road out of town, empty grain silos loom, perched like headstones over wheat-field graves. Harvesters sag, tyres cracked like the asphalt. Rotting carcasses litter riverless beds—tongues swollen, flyblown, unslaked. First,…
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Tōrō Nagashi
Your flame flickers briefly— a parting whisper. Some trick of the river mimics your laughter. We stand apart at sunset, lost in natsukashii, come together in darkness, to watch the dead pass on. Your light has fallen now to shadow beneath the bridge. Ryan Stone First published on Napalm and Novocain, January 2016 Published at Poetry…
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Paradigm Shift
I’m not an ice-block or wasted teardrop, mooching around your Long Island Iced Tea. I’m not chasing dreams, dreaming of Jeannie, won’t slow for one more whistle stop. I’ve never bridged sighs, I don’t island hop, or tasted the free airs of Heaney. Nor held a heart that, like some Houdini, didn’t vanish with barbaric…
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Night Dancing
Dusky pink moonlight Cherry blossom arabesque Dreaming tomorrows Ryan Stone
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Pulling Back the Sheet
It started as a scribble in my yearbook and ended with an apology, of sorts: I wish I’d been more, held your hand when it mattered and even when it didn’t. Ink lasts longer than schoolyard dreams, wilted before their bloom. Notes we wrote lend breath to ghosts, long after pens fall still. In this…
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Days
Sometimes she’s wildfire, burning through the night; some days she’s a winter storm, ice and fury unleashed. Sometimes she’s a shadow, neither fully here or really there; some days she’s untamable, wild as rolling seas. Sometimes I hold her close, as the world starts coming undone; some days we fit together and I feel that…
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Self-portrait
And these are my failings: a wild smile always leads my mind to the kiss hiding behind it and sometimes to plot the shortest route there. Did I say sometimes? I lie a bit, too. And I tend to zone out to small-talk – there are enough idle words in the world. And I can’t…
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Adrift
The last leaves are golden, most have already flown. Branches hang bare beneath ashen skies. Not so different from when you climbed, hand over slow hand, waging a war inside your young mind. One leaf breaks free, hangs on a moment, before leaping into the maelstrom. I imagine a short fall, sharp jerk and silence;…
