THE FORGE
Among the Remains
I didn’t see the fire that destroyed the old couple’s trailer home down the road, just heard the fire trucks roaring past, stirring the country darkness with red and yellow lights. The couple knocked two days later and I gave them some tomato sandwiches and cokes. I asked if they needed anything and they asked if I could look after their chickens…and my first thought was, Y’all got chickens on that little scrap of land?
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THE RAPPAHANNOCK REVIEW
Letter to Jonah on the Border
For five days the river kept me down,
and you were my held breath.
In the land of the blind—the old witness told me—seeing is subversive.
I was writing about people fleeing the fall.
But on the Matamoros banks,
they murmur this isn’t the spot where their bodies were found,
this lily cross by this river that moves like mud…
TWO HAWKS QUARTERLY
Old House
This is the house with the mispelled date fingered into the old cement stoop: Aprial 18, 1959. This is the house where your father fell and never climbed back up. This is a house with lightning bugs blinking summer fire through the backyard wisteria and roses of your mother’s name. “This house,” you told your high school friends when he still lived here, “this is the house of the zombie—Father Ghost.”
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(Art by Steve Condiotti, Two Hawks Quarterly, Fall 2023)
TWO HAWKS QUARTERLY
Old Groundhog
It no longer carries traffic, except a clickety golf cart to assist in feeding the horses. These days, it connects only two places on this planet: my house to my mom’s house. A two-minute walk. So close that she will visit in the mornings to drink sugary black coffee out of a mug I save for her, red like hibiscus blossoms. I’ll break open yesterday’s smoked roaches, roll them in a fresh paper, and we’ll share that too…
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(Art by Patricia Bingham, Two Hawks Quarterly, Fall 2023)
HELLO POETRY
Collected Poems
What the Old Church Lady Taught Me of Enlightenment
“Lord knows Gods come and go so quick it’s like lightning,
and lord knows I’ve received my slings and arrows all in silence.
Don’t quote me about love being nat’ral or rent being heaven-sent;
they isn’t and looord no I ain’t gonna preach the almighty’s reliance.
The friendless creep of hours into centuries can be frightening;
I’m just enlightened enough to know there’s no such thing
as enlightenment.”
Jeff Dingler 