By Joe Hess
Drinking, Early Twentieth
for Jackie Leven
Ballads and white curves
of smoke marooned
in the afternoon, dank
basement eons pass
the screen watchers
below the city. Their eyes
moisten under a canopy
of heating ducts
as concrete entombs
men into pink, timeless
funeral carnations
devoted to anonymous
graves. At midday,
one ascends the stone
steps for a place under
the Midwestern sky.
He pulls out his wallet
of faded names
and numbers assembled
for that day one might
call them all. And white bars
of heaven keep me from you.
Joe Hess received his MA in Poetry from Miami University and his MFA from Ashland University. You can find his work in Marathon Literary Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Lime Hawk Literary Arts Collective,and in the newly released anthology from Shabda Press entitled Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands. His personal website has access to more of his publications at: jmhess.ink
Cover art is by Brian Michael Barbeito.
Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer and photographer. His recent work appears at Fiction International and Baphash Literary and Arts Magazine.
Fourth and Sycamore 