Fine Flu Journal Fine Flu Journal- june 2014 | Page 15

STEVE KLEPETAR
Between the Lines
When the last riders left, there came a hurricane
of tears or maybe that was only sky’s last howl.
So many important figures dancing their way
through yellow grass, such an explosion
of passports, impressive credentials lined with lead.
Oh, radioactive sun, gas blazing through
the stratosphere and nothing to offer but chewing
gum and tape. You could say we were caught
with our pants down, the unready and the blind.
Humming birds bored us with their incessant chasing
games, invisible walls we never could break down
and poison keeping us away from every other door.
So many nights alone, and really that made us laugh
in a tickle of furnace heat, popcorn sticking
between our teeth and the glowing TV on.
We might have been lying on our sides or studying
lines between all those familiar words, that time
of year and love is not love which alters where it
alteration finds. Speak friend and enter, speak your
mind, toss every filter in the melting ponds.
They tell us spring is coming, that winter’s heart
attack is near. Three girls tiptoe on a tightrope
far above these walls where moths flit, glinting
like teeth, white and empty as frozen mouths of ghosts.

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