Issue Twenty-Three - Winter 2014

And in this Brutal Passage

By Mercedes Lawry

He came out of the gray huddle,
an avalanche of a man,
broken and vast, without forgiveness.

He knew spit and strike,
choke and an eternal bad morning,
waste ticking in his bones.

He would wreck and dismiss,
needing no delusion, just
a scatter of coin which meant

Bread and bed and swerving cloud
of drink and so on again
until he fell, final and unremarked.

Copyright 2014 Lawry