Joel Fry

Black



Come to me now
while sunlight pillows
a black-turned field.
Earth's slow simmer
is summer blood mixing,
you and I
shoulder to shoulder.

Hard crusts
and leaf rims
babel
with every step.

And the creek,
listening with sharp ears,
turns new
on silver sides.





Wife


For today, I live in the legend
of the present, past rows of hedgerows
and houses deep in flowers and gardens deep
in spring in the reach of all unknown
that is whispered into the earth.

I live alone for now,
still waiting in the room
but not for a call.

A woman moves past me.
In traffic she is my friend.
When I kiss her hand I have
known her.

When she wakes me up
at night I expect her.
When she hands me
our son after son,
the long line stretches
past war and death,
through plane flights
to Nashville and Christchurch.

I am almost her.
She waits for me to come home.




Joel Fry: I live in Athens, Alabama, and I work as a mental health worker in Decatur, Alabama. In my work I try to improve the lives of the mentally ill and mentally retarded. I have had work published in the Melic Review, Stirring and Eclectica.





Michael P. Workman Lois Marie Harrod Joel Fry Steve Dalachinsky Aldo Tambellini Charles Frederickson Stan Dunn