Silence

by Charlie Brice

So many are attuned to sharps and flats,
timbre, time signatures, and dynamics,
arpeggios, thirds, fifths, and sevenths,

but what of the rests, the moments
between the notes where there is no sound,
not even the noise squeezed out of car

wrecks, dishwashers, wind, rain,
or anything John Cage could conjure?
I’m talking about what’s below the grave

or between the planets. The silent world
of rest that prepares the way and makes
the hum of life so sweet, so tender.

Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Pinnacles of Hope (Impspired Books, 2022). His poetry has been nominated three times for both the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.

All work by Charlie Brice

SHARK REEF

A Literary Magazine

Issue Forty-Three - Winter 2024

by Charlie Brice