Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Eric Roy
—
The Heart of the Universe Is a Black Hole
Gradually, then suddenly, the wind kicks
up prairie grass like brown waves
close to shore. Concrete is the color
of the sky. Clouds reinvent themselves
on Instagram again, this time as fog
around a streetlight filtered through a pale
blue-green. Shadows tend to blend in
with their subtle ushers. Most of the iron
fence isn’t really there. Storefronts keep
firewood wrapped in plastic like a body’s
bundled bones. Remember how cool
your turquoise ring was to the touch?
That was a good thing. It meant the pale
blue-green stones genuine, desirable & real.
In winter, people walk past you, heads held
in coats so thick they can’t look back unless
they turn themselves all the way around,
bumper cars whirling inside a warehouse
size of a pale blue-green planet. Where no
orange bright coils. Where no longer light
to illuminate a show. While something in
my chest moves like an ordinary rabbit
bedding down beneath ordinary snow.
Eric Roy has a chapbook, All Small Planes (Lily Poetry Review Press - 2021), which received Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominations for its hybrid writing. New poems are forthcoming from The Pinch, Post Road Magazine, LIT Magazine and Ursula. His recent work can also be found at Apple Valley Review, Bennington Review, Fence, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares and elsewhere. A former teacher, coach, and cook, he now sells junk in Round Top, TX (pop.87)
@eric_roy777
