A Day in Summer Years Back

by Stephen J. Golds

The day

of the procedure,

I still can’t bring myself

to name the crime

we committed

together,

I waited outside

your house.

The island was hit

by a biblical typhoon that summer and

I wondered if it was

God punishing us,

even though

I didn’t believe in any

Gods then and

still don’t now.

Underneath the eaves

of your neighbor’s garage,

I waited for your parents to

bring you home

from that place,

with nothing but time

and cigarettes and prayers to a God

I didn’t quite believe in.

Your neighbor,

the kind old lady with the dogs, brought

an umbrella outside and

offered it to me but

I refused it

because the rain

that was on my face

was a mask for tears.

I just waited that day

in the storm

with my sins

and my cigarettes and

my time and

my prayers and

my ghosts of Gods

and my guilty relief.

Hospital on the Hill

by Stephen J. Golds

All the kids 

with their grins &

lunch money at school. 

There with you in that other place. 

Words flashed 

naked behind glass. 

Clustered people incessant 

about their hearts, 

minds as though 

they’d been bought 

broken secondhand, 

non-returnable &

receipt gone, warranty 

in a language unspoken. 

Smoking desperate, 

blue smoke plumes, 

drifting hallucinations 

in a cafeteria odorous of last week’s

meat loaf, piss, and nicotine limbo. 

Hands tremble winter in 

a sick summer sun. 

There with something that 

was once you in that place. 

Then leaving solitarily 

with unspoken words in mouth 

broken, loose teeth touched 

lingered upon by tongue. 

Stephen J. Golds was born in London, UK but has lived in Japan for most of his adult life. He enjoys spending time with his daughters, reading books, traveling, boxing, and listening to old Soul LPs. Glamour Girl Gone, his debut novel, will be released by Close to The Bone Press on January 29th, 2021.