Issue Twenty-Five - Winter 2015

The Heart Needs No Roof

By Jay Klokker

–-for Manuel O., who star-gazed

Because the house where
your dreams became real
had stone walls and no roof
to block its view of the volcano
even now there come nights
when the ceiling of your bedroom
dissolves and you’re seven years old
keeping watch until dawn
while the night-singing birds
and blood-sucking assassin bugs
draw shadows of red across
the face of the moon.

Copyright 2015 Klokker

Jay Klokker spent many years of teaching ESL to immigrant adults in Brooklyn and now lives in the Hudson Valley, where he writes poems and speculative fiction and dreams of a better world. His poems have appeared in a number of magazines, including Shark Reef and, most recently, One Hand Clapping.

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