2022, everyday words, no scape, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

Dead sparrow / All Saint’s Day

sitting at the downtown coffee shop
before walking to the river to work
there is a dead sparrow on the other side of giant glass window / facing West Main Street
beak down on the sidewalk

out the side of my left eye it sometimes
hops up to skitter away / but / nothing doing

the sparrow lies there as a well-fed business man in an eggplant-colored shirt
walking gingerly in shiny black shoes scoots by / wrinkling his face in disgust

it would not be a stretch to say I look well-fed but the insistence of the left eye / the
hip / shoulder / knee pain reminds me

some passersby would step out / scoot by
my corpse too.

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2022, homeless, Louisville Stories, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, psychogeography, river life, the no-scape

shadow city / glistening city

I saw the great blue heron twice. The city beneath and beside the city peopled with broken dreamers. Stamped FAULTY and flushed away with dead fish and miscarried fetuses, they bring forth their dreams and sweet wine to keep warm against early winter kisses carried in on the wind with whitecaps and choppy waves.

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