Home | Current Issue | Submissions | Masthead | About Us | Archive

Back to Issue 2 - Spring 2012

 

North of Paradise
LD Novick

Sure as silence chases sound

And restless youth will turn the page

The warbled drone of days long past

Diminished by the early morning's reverie

Echoes across a chasm of darkness

And into the canyon below

 

Paid in full by a fractured riverbed

Because Sheriff always keeps his word

Locked and left out the fool barred the door

Tonight children will sleep on the porch

Amongst dirty floors and discarded squares

A metal gate keeps the world outside

One chain-linked society of four

 

Sheriff skipped town Sunday

And nobody seen him since

We live and die by the dirt and grime

As dust choked lungs breathe a blazing sky

Where old men tell tall tales

To doe eyed children

Mostly lies of Highwaymen

And some dead hero from afar

 

But also of simpler times

In calloused voices of reason

God up and left

The rest who had nowhere else to go

Panicked by the prospect of paradise

They headed North to be

 

Cursed by those who remain

Like the drunkard throws a fit at the five and dime

'Cause you still can't buy a beer on His day

So we'll scour our hands pink by the fluorescent light

Face grown roots long past due

Our paradise squandered by wills of wicked men

And yet, we still pray for rain

 

Back to Issue 2 - Spring 2012

 

 

Wild Beasties by Kathlene Lisle. Oil on canvas
Painting: Kathlene Lisle, Wild Beasties, 2012, oil on canvas