Category Archives: Working Class Literature

2024, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

someday it will rain

it’s not about living forever: that fool’s errand

chasing after the memory

of who you thought you were

life as noun – the subject / object

of marketing ads you think you’re safe from ‘cuz you scroll

the algorithm of wrinkle-erasing photo filters

quipts on the generational skirmishes

blame games / selling you a memory you never were:

life as a verb – best served to live

until we don’t. burn. this day is fuel not ash

burn knowing someday

it will rain

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2024, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life, the no-scape, waterfront, Working Class Literature

“in our talons*”

The blue heron dances with her reflection on the long brown water, south to north under a dull, refracted light cast from a sky full of rain heavy clouds. As I walk onto the wharf, a common grackle glides to a halt, nods– spreads wings to the wet breeze.

The last song playing on the radio is still singing in my head. A dark hymnal that hums of the Ohio River Valley Gothic, and I see a mirror of me in long brown water.

(* inspired in part by a song by Bowerbirds)

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