Doug at My Age
Good Luck is chained to the bow,
frontlining this plow through the flood.
Ay (yes), we’re singing and dancing
under the moon that draws
scythes and staples night to the air,
the fortune of lightless pastures.
Crickets and owls crow in and out
of the dreams of everyone else.
I’m glad to be gone from here, the tide
that’s always one with its own border.
Reading the stream again, this one’s mine.
Hydrated leaves take the water taxi
and here is some childhood again,
borne on the backs of jagged rocks
and plenty of ivy. Again, years go
and then this thicket of solitude
pops up again, in pictures I didn’t take.
My shed cells are the corpse of memory.
Lost against the gentlest possible tide,
there’s a kiss, a game of army, broken
tractor motors, and that tunnel they say
some kid in the nineties disappeared up.
About the Author: Connor Stratman lives in Dallas, TX. His books and chapbooks include Some Were Awake (plumberries, 2011), Volcano (2011/2017, Writing Knights), and An Early Scratch (Erbacce, 2010). His work has appeared in journals such as Ditch, Counterexample Poetics, Earl of Plaid, Etcetera, Backlash, Moria, Dead Snakes, and Otoliths.
Image Credit: “Head of a Roman Boy” second half of 2nd century A.D. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
As It Ought To Be 