“Mind Your Own Damn Business” © Mark Blickley

 

This life
she displayed good market share capture

—

the rabbit was a small bird
young, perhaps, but not too young

eggs were crushed but the bird went on
as does a soot-faced coal miner at family dinner,
lighting the way with a whiskey bottle,
a small wooden cross and a
prostitute visit every Sunday

The town lights were dim at half past midnight.
Inside a salon with swinging double-doors,
was cherub with feathered wings
who did not judge the miner’s soiled face

For sometimes life is just to be there,
like a temporal rock cast into a brook
and when it wastes away,
that’s the way of things

A few may have something,
ousting death wisdom with a sharp, gleaming blade

and others prance about on ancient stone wall
like cut-out paper figures
pretending that they’ve composed Beethoven’s Ninth

 

As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry and academic essays. His writing can be found in Pif Magazine, New Verse News, Counterpunch, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both) and The Opiate. He is the author of the poetry books Those Who Hold Up the Earth and Empire’s End, and the short fiction collection That Night and Other Stories.

Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection Hunger Pains (Buttonhook Press). Blick believes that when you travel in a circle you can view life at every possible angle.