Artwork © Judson K. Evans

 

Winter Robbery

What if criminals
fall down from their drug
insulated intercourse
into salty sugar stupors of all
night tired sitting?

When plastic film
covers the broken window entry
point and the cheap alarm
that’s been added will never
sound.

But the one in the basement
widow squawks onto
an unresponsive night as
I come home.

Space heater humming,
I’m alone. I wait, listen.
Winter is for waiting. The snow, falling,
circles, spinning, crisp, my arm heating,
melting, slushing, waiting,
and unlocking, opening the door,
closing the door,
and sitting.

I tell my mom what happened. I tell her
that I still have more than
most people
on the earth. That
it’s not a big deal. I work with my son
to put bars on the basement windows.

I wonder who’s the thief
when I spend the insurance money.
There’s not much to it.

 

Aiman Wesley Mueller teaches first year college academic writing. Meanwhile, he enjoys creative nonfiction essays and less easily apprehended hybrid explorations. Having reinvented himself many times and also having close contact with multiple immigrant communities, open-mindedness and empathy are among the things he cherishes.

Judson Evans is a full-time Instructor in the Liberal Arts department at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he has taught a range of courses, from a Poetry Workshop on haiku, prose poetry and haibun, to a course on theories of cave art and the role of the cave in ritual and philosophy. In 2007 he was chosen by John Yau as an Emerging Poet for The Academy of American Poets. He was one of the founding members of Off the Park Press, and published work in each of its three anthologies responding to provocative contemporary painters. His most recent work has been published in (print journals) Laurel Review, Folio, Volt; 1913: a journal of forms; and Green Mountains Review, and (online journals) White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. He won The Phillip Booth Poetry Award from Salt Hill Review in 2013. He has collaborated with composers, such Mohammed Fairouz, Mart Epstein, and Rudolf Rojhan, who set several of his poems to music, as well as with choreographers, dancers, musicians and other poets, including Gale Batchelder, and videographers Nate Tucker and Ray Klimek.