an on-line poetry magazine
for the 21st century

COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE SUMMER 2023

Ray Freed

DEADHORSE

They work us 7 days 12 on 12 off.
Leroy tells tales
of skeeters big as crows,
crows big as eagles ,
eagles like jumbo jets.
He faces 30 years
for cutting short a life
a wrong thing said about his sister.

The world is white,
for 6 weeks we see no sun.

A man falls to earth,
laying crumpled there.
This is not the whole story.
A part of him continues
through the globe emerging
on the opposite side,
rights itself and wakes
the first bird,
telling it to sing, sing.

What did you do as you slid through the years?
I lived among men and breathed and ate and shat
I loved and was loved, I wrote this poem.

Old now that once was young
sly now once dumb,
I listen that talked
walk that crawled,
know man is beast but beast not man.
Eyes are for looking, not believing,
the heart is for pumping blood.