Next story: Abuse Art. not children, by Robert Pomerhn
Snapshot
by Terry Godby
Still I see the four of us
wrapped in the mountain’s shadow,
a horse the color of iced tea
eating from our hands.
Lucas shows off his new bride
and we wish their cottage
with its scrawl of chimney smoke
was ours. When my camera
swings out, it takes all of us
to wrench the sticky strap
from the horse’s mouth.
He bares his sugar-cube teeth
for one last click
and we head indoors
to watch the fire devour perfect
loaves of wood.
One year later the horse is sold,
the pasture grown ragged,
and Lucas is gone
in an echoing shot
that stills every rocking chair
in the valley.
His wife learns the news at the diner
over lunch with her lover.
“She might as well have pulled
the trigger herself,”
an old man hisses.
The gallery of faces before her
fades like an old photograph,
the cold stones of their eyes
the last thing she sees
before she falls,
daylight snapping shut
like the afternoon she tumbled
into the river, but this time
she is not a little girl, this time
half a dozen men
will not jump in to save her.
Issue Navigation> Issue Index > v6n1: A Congressman Abroad (1/4/07) > Poetry > Snapshot This Week's Issue • Artvoice Daily • Artvoice TV • Events Calendar • Classifieds |