Category Archives: waterfront

2023, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape, waterfront, Working Class Literature

Autumn 2023, no. 3

back on the wharf:
the air is cool today
a not quite autumnal kiss
a tease right out of one more
badly written southern
antebellum book

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2023, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life, summer, the no-scape, waterfront, Working Class Literature

heat of the night: July 2023

before she curled up to sleep on the bench, the woman lit a match and burned a small piece of paper she had rolled up. it was a prayer. she wore an old sweatshirt with a ruffled dickey on it, the sort of thing a grandnephew might give for Christmas. people come to the river all the time and burn little prayers. sometimes, in the absence of fire, they leave them on a bench or the wall in case God walks by. the entire wharf is an altar and we are all offered up.

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2023, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life, the no-scape, waterfront, Working Class Literature

when at the start of summer

my wife makes deviled eggs and the mayflies have hatched on the wharf / the rain is warm like the spit of a thousand cynical angels / the wharf raccoon gets (re)caught / being between Derby and the State Fair, a couple of street folks sleep on the amphitheater steps near River Road / the only respite from rain is its unsatisfactory absence

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