Oh it’s hard out here on the planet. Way out here past the city limits, beyond
the last billboard. They’ve closed down the mine. Our minerals are sleeping
in the seams of hardpan on a far-flung world which has lost its way—out here
at the very edge of your bright and shining universe.
In my mind’s ear I can still hear the rinky-tink piano, the loud laughter,
and the solid thump of a beer glass on the scarred table. Rough-edged people retelling
their joined stories. But folks are gone now, except for the few that got stuck
in this dim place, a few too tired to start over, and some odd ones who are suited
to the dark and the cold.
You don’t see a soul sometimes for days. Birthdays are not remembered. Families
are scattered. And the wind always blows. The clothes snap on the clothesline like
they are waving goodbye to those who packed up, pulled out, never sent a letter;
and the mail only comes once every two hundred years.
The weeds are growing wild now in the cracks of the sidewalk, and the last street
light is flickering like it has dust in its eye.
is a recent graduate of Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota. In December 2013,
his poetry chapbook, The Lemon Bars of Parnassus, was published by Parallel
Press in Madison, Wisconsin.
www.leekisling.com
