Dry Runold days have folded — I’m
calling to nothing.
they were rushed, now the drumroll
is peaking.
everything i once loved stands in a row of statues
— in that slumber i sense their
holding, but upon a
leaning their support’s as strong as dust.
fear and courage ellipticals though it
won’t ever balance out, and every
next time snares itself.
these days my heart never opens except when
it shatters to even gloved touch.
each moment i ignore a million little
signs, holding out
for the one that will affirm i am
gold in the rust.
seems i haven’t given
up but I guess i never really tried,
now i’m hanging on,
waiting for the moment that finally put me
a mile past the brink of it. Echo KnivesIt echoes,
follows in parentheses, these
lingering fellows—placating
what need not be retained.
Act III is all that
remains of hollow
halls. How it got to those haunts—
redacted, breathing in only
its echoes.
Kindred lacks the
identical; identity
conforms through misinterpretation,
not records.
Knife echoes watered down, (or
aggrandized). Lie
dormant, sweet gutter folly,
return, stirred up, a shadow
of its
former self—an overproduction
of its being. Joe is a writer from New Jersey. My work can be found in publications across the U.S. and in ten other countries. My novel Caina (Mockingbird Lane Press) and my novella Smash and Grab (Books to Go Now) were both published in 2018. You can follow him on: @JoeAlba88

"Dry Run" & "Echo Knives"

Selcouth Station