…hands and face scrubbed clean he made his way back to the garage empty now of people just the shadows of machines oil-slick patches drifting beneath poor lighting and his betrayer was hidden there dark-eyed and steel-bladed teeth glinting with motion…
…the men who survived the failure of media who fucked their women on stinking couches in the back rooms of poker games still believing in a world defined by finance a world of insurance and speculation a spiraling through accountancy and the odor of stale tobacco…
…in the centuries before light pollution the skies were thick with stars layer upon layer fading back to the origin of the one true infinity but he sat there motionless in his dark room tied to a plain wooden chair a hat on his balding head an apology on his lips…
…the clinic was closed due to a lack of needles the damaged ego of policy awash in the fundamental failure of politics but gulls ate trash in the parking lot and the contents of a dead hawk’s stomach she was certain that he must be dead his blood staining her retinas……
…there were no longer any limits after their world was partitioned each section allocated to a keeper of power the border areas deteriorated quickly into scrubby grassland and the locals who ploughed the fog-stricken bottomlands became detached from society…
*****
Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, Southword, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. His first book is scheduled for 2025 publication by Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
