Green Grass

by Ian C Smith

It was because he faced years of limited or no reading for one who, as a child read by lamplight, a guilty secret in that milieu. A rat reviled, he releases nervous energy mingling outside, scanning for an assassin in a popular city alley, its graffiti attracting tourists. The broken light of joy gleaned when his name was different, haunts him. He would live in a stone house near a pier, the past cast off, with painted window boxes of flowers. A girl walks his way, carrying a basket as he wrinkles a dog’s ears.

He sleeps fully dressed, lit by pulsing neon. Knowing they will come, thoughts funereal, he reasons death awaits us all, listens, tuned into anything different; an approach of addicts’ familiar tread, howling homeless shelter dreams, their sad hopes rotting in rooms with grimy glasses, bare light bulb décor, narrow beds, pillows rancid with despair. A dog whimpers somewhere in the city. He remembers the glimmer of light afforded by books, a girl’s doona-shrouded body warmth.

Stubbing, saving, a cigarette, he longs to disappear, wraithlike, his treasured share of the shakedown gone, grand plans drained like blood from a bullet hole.  Stupid, stupid. Beyond the window, that dog again, a cry in the night. Outside his blocked door, a muffled alien sound. A sloped sill reaches a drainpipe, grouted bricks afford knotty fingertip holds if he doesn’t look down. Down is the problem, inching down, his direction until he can run, hide, slide, no longer.

Coyote a caste

apart, senses fine-tuned, sniffs

yellow rainflower.

****** 

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, Antipodes, cordite, Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Southerly, & Two-Thirds North.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.

Terry Butler lives in the country, near a small town south of San Jose, CA called Hollister. He used to write steadily, publishing both in print and online as Terence Butler, but after some health issues, the energy needed to write seemed to dissipate somewhat. He has been a professional photographer and a painter/collage-assemblage maker for most of his working life, so painting and photo art have taken the place of genre fiction as an outlet. Recently the story “Fire Man” appeared all as a piece in his mind so he simply wrote it down. He sent it to Cindy, and in the ensuing back and forth. They somehow discussed using some of his visual art, too. Cindy is simply the best, and a real stalwart in this little world. She has a big heart and a deep love for animals, too!