September 2015
Good books keep me up at night. Okay, good video games do, too—and good coffee (or any coffee). I'm from Selma, Alabama, and I teach composition at Mississippi State University. My poems have appeared here in Verse-Virtual, in Storm Cellar Quarterly, and in Sixfold, and I serve as Poetry Editor for Blinders Journal.
Visiting the Stones of an Abandoned River Town
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon,
to the dirt and cement park
where there is a worn stone—
a block from which to have a word with ruin.
I'll have to climb it before dark.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon.
I'll go to see the river run.
I'll ask it if it carved,
where there is a worn stone,
a broken moon.
I will help take it apart.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon.
I will find a lily bloom
and leave it there to starve
where there is a worn stone,
or a numbered stake on an uncertain chart.
I'll pretend that someone left a mark.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon,
where there is a worn stone.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon,
to the dirt and cement park
where there is a worn stone—
a block from which to have a word with ruin.
I'll have to climb it before dark.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon.
I'll go to see the river run.
I'll ask it if it carved,
where there is a worn stone,
a broken moon.
I will help take it apart.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon.
I will find a lily bloom
and leave it there to starve
where there is a worn stone,
or a numbered stake on an uncertain chart.
I'll pretend that someone left a mark.
I'll go to Old Cahawba soon,
where there is a worn stone.
©2015 Jessica M. Lockhart