No. 5

Winter 2004

This town is a flat tire,
a traveler stranded at roadside.
Paperwinged moths dogfighting for space
in the headlights
as the crescent moon's tears soak the cornfields

This town is an old man
minus an ear since the '30s.
Lives by the railroad in a tarpaper shack
and he's lonesome,
and he loves her.

This town is a dead end,
a street with no name.
Silos and oil rigs repeating for miles
on the prairie,
a chicken coop of wide open spaces.

This town is a train wreck
and its solemn survivors.
Steam engine car folds like a lawnchair on impact.
Mangled and coal-bleeding,
breathing the buffalo's last breath.

This town is a battle scar,
a rifleshot splintering shoulderblades.
Great grandpa fought for the North
down at Shiloh,
tattoo of a cross on his forearm.

This town is a tree trunk
cut down in its prime for the firewood.
Roots still intact and leaching the soil
but they're starving,
choking on vacant earth and sun-bleached bones.

This town is a tumbleweed
caught in a barbed-wire fence.
Swept like a crumb by easterly winds
through the grasslands.

Copyright 2003, Christopher J. Holmes

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.