Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty-one Winter 2009 |
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 |