Poems by Thomas Brush, T. Clear & Terri Cohlene

Three poems from Raven Chronicles,
Vol. 26, LAST CALL

In Hiding
by Thomas Brush

October, looking out
As the light begins to fail but it should be enough
To see what’s written on the side of the building
Where I live—I was here but you’ll never find me.—Heroes
For Hire—scrawled on garbage
Cans just down the street, and the red and blue faces of strangers
Staring at me from the inked flesh of the bartender
As she mixes another Tequila and lime.
                            So many messages
To consider and try to understand give me stories
To tell, things to do.
                              Lord, let me do them,
In spite of the cold trail midnight sprays across the night sky,
Or the homeless howls half-eaten by their separate
Prayers, their familiar voices and deaths
To come.
                   A poor man’s choice,
Hoping for what can still be found, that should last longer
Than a lifetime, out of the ruined fields
Of Antietam, out of what’s left
Of Fallujah.
                     Out of Blue Earth, Minnesota, and Squirrel Run,
Arkansas, towns I passed through growing up and will visit
Again, I keep telling myself, hiding out, staying close
To home, a block to the park, the bar
The other way, both useful and necessary
As the silence drifting toward me and why
The hell
Not.

Departing the House of  My Former Life
by T. Clear

Once I close the door, hear the click
of the latch, there’s no going back.
I may run circles around it, peer
 
into each window as long as desired,
but entry is impossible. The single key is, 
from this day forward, forever lost.
 
Best to gather the few remaining flowers 
before the garden lapses into ruin,
fill my pockets with apples.

Disavow all I’ve abandoned 
inside this lathe and plaster fortress, 
every root still clutching a fist of soil. 

Better to leave and not return, 
not recall the accumulation of broken beds, 
the last unshattered cup, the wedding china. 

And a rock thrown at a pane makes bad luck. 
I’ll unpin the solitary dress hung ragged 
on the line, yank the numbers 

from the siding, check the mailbox.
No curtain wavers; every candle’s a stub.
Not a soul to wave me on but my own.

Seven Things To Do in the Sandhills of Nebraska
by Terri Cohlene

1. Drive and drive and drive
from highway to aggregate
to rutted, grassy roads.
Marvel at clouds
embracing their tornados.
Note the diminishing traffic—
houses, barns, buildings of any kind.

2. Stop in the middle of nowhere.
Except this is not nowhere, exactly— 
this is the homestead
of your great-grandfather,
640 acres claimed in 1904—
land that barely fed the livestock
and his growing family.

3. Follow the line of your cousins,
crawl under barbed wire
held up by your uncle—
one of your mother’s three brothers
estranged from you
these past fifty-eight years.

4. Watch Cousin Lee,
the only cowboy in the bunch,
scrape prairie burrs
from his pant-leg.
Feel overwhelmed
by the sky.

5. Stand around, scratch your head
at the stories:
The house was over there.
Can’t be. There’s a big tree.
It grew after. That was a long time ago.
Here’s where the garbage was.

6. Look at old, glass bottles,
wonder who drove
the Model A—source
of that rusty, old gear with the filigree knob—
worry how you are going to get
it past security at the airport.

7. Breathe. Take in 
the Nebraska air 
your lungs crave.
Space is not the final frontier, 
your uncle declares. It’s here. 
No one wants the Sandhills.

But, you want them—
know you are only 
one generation away 
from belonging
to this useless, stunning place.

Thomas Brush has had work published in Poetry Northwest, The Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, The North American Review, The Cimarron Review, The Texas Observer and other magazines and anthologies. His most recent books are from Lynx House Press: Last Night, 2012, Open Heat, 2015, and God’s Laughter, fall 2018.

A founder of Floating Bridge Press, T. Clear’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, most recently in Terrain.org, Scoundrel Time, UCity Review, The Rise Up Review, and 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Award and Independent Best American Poetry Award. She is a lifelong resident of Seattle, and has the good fortune to spend her days inventing new color combinations to paint on sandblasted glass, allowing her to make her living as an artist.

Terri Cohlene’s poetry has appeared in such publications as Godiva Speaks, Pontoon 8 & 9, Floating Bridge Review, Arnazella, Switched on Gutenberg, and the anthology, America at War. She edited two adult poetry anthologies, Godiva Speaks I & II. She has taught at Richard Hugo House, Shoreline and Whatcom Community Colleges, and Hypatia-in-the Woods. Currently, she serves on the board of Olympia Poetry Network, and is a freelance editor in Olympia, Washington.