Jimmie Rodgers
1
Sing through the blue haze of a winter night,
Where the Susquehanna runs blindly into sheets of ice,
And the stultifying chill even stopped the smokers.
Foxboy with greasy hair and doggirl walked besides the black railings on salted streets,
Not a damn thing out there with them.
Drawn to the Coke sign that flickered with their heart beats.
A wooden counter and tore up seats,
There a woman cried alone pawing another shot.
A sound like a vibrating crystal over the tinny speakers,
Some blues song long forgot.
A pinball machine chimes and finishes each bar,
No voices just paranoid glances.
2
Here I remember fake smiles and heartbeats,
Cracking the walls.
Paid five dollar covers ,
All for me to step into the wrong room.
Silence strikes,
Doors locked and windows closed.
Apparitions appear in the corner of empty alleys,
The thicket roads heavy with grime,
Abandoned even by Christ.
Foxboy! The stop sign!
The moon too is red reflected in the ice.
Broken Plate Blues
Doggirl the catfish carry letters in their whiskers.
Scraped through mud at the bottom of the lake.
Edged in black announcing the sale of broken plates and personal literature.
Doggirl row me back to the tilted shack by the water’s edge.
I remember when it still stood tall.
With the moon at its back.
A raven at the window traces her beak around cracked glass.
Throw the reel.
Green water flows over.
Loon calls.
Green water ripples.
Doggirl I dreamt with the water.
I was in a pail surrounded by burnt grass and garter snakes.
Chewed up by dogs.
Poinsettias
Poinsettias dehydrated on my desk.
Black leaves wilting into waste.
Like looking into a broken mirror,
I know this is not my face.
Dry Earth in the pot,
Contrasted with the red of the remaining leaves,
A cruel picture of what could be.
Had I been grown up enough to take care of it.
Roses on the roadside sing,
But not to me.
A ranger knocks on the cafe door,
While coyotes howl to the tapping.
A light in the window far off,
Curtains closed.
The sound of the saxophones ring,
But not to me.
Doggirl I clipped the wings of an oriole,
And left the flowers dead on the desk.
Not enough time yet.
— Adrian Frey is a 24 year old poet from Upstate New York. Their work has appeared in APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL and Poem Pilled. Their Instagram is @aj_frey and their Twitter is @slowcorecowboy.