Skip to main content

Just a small sinkhole by John Porter

in an unmapped village 
they worked round it
made no calls, no fuss,
inch by inch it crept till
cows tumbled mid chew
people just putting the kettle on
then gone with house,
bedridden uncles, caged birds,
into the void.
It spread and consumed 
grey towns 
where beige takeaways 
looked gratefully to the abyss,
second level cities submitted
at sea it ate retirement cruises.
We knew it was near
but still worked, sent invoices, bought fruit,
did not mention the hole,
at the end allowed our eyes to meet,
held hands, fell in.

---

After living in a Moscow and London John Porter is now in Gloucestershire. He has degrees in Russian and Law and when not juggling his two small sons he writes poems, usually on trains. His work has appeared in  magazines including The Stinging Fly, Prole, Marble, Streetcake and Strix.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

  —Dick Allen, “B&B”    Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television.  News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like  to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying  groceries up a flight of stairs  until I’m too drained to care  which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including  Escape Envy  (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021),  I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and  The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in  Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review,  and other journals. An ex-c

Paths by O.T. Park

I like walking worn down tracks Where the beat of human feet Has steadily marked the time. Paths where trees eclipse the sky and where dabbled light anoints The knotted and gnarled ground. Long lanes scarred by raised roots Which form illegible inscriptions; Where vegetation creates a nave and the trail itself an endless aisle. A placid place that celebrates Feet moving in communion. --- O.T. Park lives and works in Guildford. He has had poems published in Eye Flash Poetry, The Dawntreader and The Cannon's Mouth.