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A Love Note
Our arrangement was simple enough. I was with Gloria the first and third weekends of the month; Ollie and Gloria were together the second and fourth weekends. Weeknights were infrequent and scheduled ad hoc.
Song for Cassiopea
Leaving polyp form, you are medusa, / telltale bell and arms but no platonic ideal, / moons backlit in aquaria.
Of the Macho
A no ignition Johnny Blaze. / Now he places a white plastic lawn chair / in his shower. Safer, if you sit.
Itemized Checks
There’s a coyote’s skull at Hurricane Creek / there’s a new table in your section / your life, sectioned
Elegy as a Writing Instructor in State Prison
I want to know the god these men know, / pounded to life on the chapel piano.
Mardi Gras
“Mardi Gras… Isn’t that the most euphonious appellation?” I closed my eyes and pronounced each syllable slowly, showing off my English and French skill to my brother, Kevin.
The New House
In the old house, the swarms of flies / you sent clouded the bathroom mirror / and swam in the puddles of wine
Photo Shoot, Roseland Park Cemetery, July 1985
The photos arrived, tucked inside your letter with its paragraphs / of charm as preamble for the main point, dagger-honed, / that stabbed me by surprise. You’d made an effort
Van the Tree Man
When Tom Blake was a young insurance agent in downtown Cincinnati, he worked for his Uncle Walt at the Walt Blake Agency, a well-known but decrepit local fixture.
Hard Candy
In the manuscript a middle-aged woman (single, childless) / looks after her crotchety father. He has shot someone, / but not to death, or maybe he took the buckshot to the gut.
O is for Orangutan, C is for Cleopatra
In the span of fifty-five years, Grandma Clou had four or five husbands. Stories were swapped like trading cards. The plumber she married at sixteen; he was thirty-two. Then there was the second cousin she met at a BBQ.
Letter from the Editor
Our inaugural issue, “The Journey,” sought to illuminate our path as we embarked on a new chapter of The Headlight Review.