Lazarus rose from the land of the dead
looked around, saw Venus standing
on her half shell suspended in the air above.
He passed a man standing on a winding path
singing into his smart phone in a foreign
language, passed him again when he looped back,
the man still singing. The loneliness of his song
moved Lazarus to tears. A spiral maze brought him
to his memory bank stored in The Blessed Church
Of The Hard Drive. Somehow or other he
ended up in vanish mode and didn’t know how
to get back out. It’s pleasant being invisible
while walking along paths where Dandelions grow
in the cracks of cement. He stayed in the shadows,
watched a woman sitting on a bench with a brass
nameplate memorializing a man named Buddy.
She’s eating a petite peach muffin, each bite
weighted with buttery crust pressed against a soft
swirl of vanilla-infused crumbs—
rapture of warm ripe fruit against her tongue.

Barbara Southard is a member of the boards of The Long Island Poetry Collective and The Long Island Poetry and Literature Repository. She served as poet laureate of Suffolk County, L.I. (2019-2021).