You’ve disappeared into
the lovely anal sphincter of
Lake Erie. Why? To settle
& define the limits of
your world like the
weeping one-eye’s island.
You can slip the hawsers,
the water’s cold beyond
the breakwater, but you’re
your own swimmer &
don’t have to dodge the
weekend Amherst sailors.
How about a strange town,
full of strangers, not your
familiar Poles, Blacks &
Italians, not your Irish crazies
either. Sell the parcel clean
& walk slow, but far, away.
How long you been dying, or
dead, Thad? Nobody’s heard
since the first or second crisis.
Try sending your new poems &
the long one with the ideogram
that you read way back then.
Anyway, Thad, been thinking of
you, the bathtub at the office,
mops in the air along with our
airy plans. Hope you’re okay.
Haven’t been back to Maxl’s
since it burned, so I heard.
Eugene Stevenson, the son of immigrants, the father of expatriates, lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. Author of the chapbook, The Population of Dreams (Finishing Line Press 2022), he is an Eisenhower Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, and his poems have appeared in After Hours Journal, Angel City Review, Hudson Review, Loch Raven Review, Roanoke Review, San Pedro River Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Volney Road Review, among others.
Image: “Decollage” by Shane Allison
Pine Hills Review 