(From a Safe Vantage)
This icy sauce they call a river
is hell on my glass bottom boat.
I can see the innards, of these waters.
Just look at the temples!
Wrecked, ruined
...drowned glory they now endure.
But if you peer closely,
blue specters will dance for your brain.
On the banks of this river, figures stand stoic.
Black robes they wear
and they’re hooded, too.
They smell of incense, their hands reach out.
They suffer so.
Some enter the waters,
quickly swept to blackness
by a current which has no soul.
In time stars fade
into a near-frozen night.
Glad I’ve got a boat
— Author and artist Lance Mazmanian: Random House with Harlan Ellison, got coffee as payment. 62+ publications since 2025, Fiction On the Web UK, Lothlórien (Paris), more. 2026 Pushcart nom and 702 words in “Defining the Las Vegas Artist 2025-2026”. Leonard Cohen (RIP) wanted a chapbook with Mazmanian. Til the Scrapbook File imploded.