Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Twenty-one
Winter 2009
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Jerusalem by Another Name
John Thomas

There is also land that nobody wants.

Fence posts loosely wound with barbwire,
leaning to the southwest where the cattle were
driven away. These old motives surround
hectares where only the wind could graze.

At the end of a road once private,
sagebrush transitions to shade.
Therein, an abandoned cottage, checkmated
by cottonwoods—three winters from collapse.
The years are the last of its windows,
a dusty honey legging down the panes.

In the compacted soil, artifacts
tongued down to sand. Horseshoes
rust-brittle in their final inning.
The garden now a ring of teeth
with nothing left to say.

Those lives unhappened
when the creek ran dry.

About John Thomas

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