five poems
by Adrian Frey
Bonfire Blues
The ache in my muscles after a night of drinking,
Is like the feeling of your shovel,
Striking a stone in the dirt,
Vibration that hits right to the bone.
Son you sure drink a lot don't you,
Don't miss work.
I've sure done it again,
The potshots I took at an angel,
Made it fall into the dirt,
The bug at the end of its life.
I miss it,
I sat on the porch and should have just watched,
My involvement in it is a weed,
Sick at the root.
I wonder how many more horseflies the hill can take,
Before it's a plague,
And the fire pit is abandoned for good,
Then old bags of marshmallows,
Will replace the poisonberries in the bush.
Dog Burial Blues
In the yard across from the deck,
There was a toy soldier,
With a brick beneath him,
Full of pellet gun holes.
From behind the fence,
A fat white dog drools,
The cottonball,
Too deaf and blind to care,
How callous youth is,
His father watches from the window,
As the pink glow during dusk,
Turns the earth into a shoulder,
And the sky into a cheek,
Breathless touching the ground.
With a puddle of mud beneath him,
Full of spent shells.
When it rains the mud and body,
Flow into the yard,
A headstone of cattails,
Surrounded by toy truck flowers.
Mute and Moving
Blankets with cigarette burns
old coffee tables
scratched dressers
the drawers
still sitting alone
in my car
next to a book
of Seamus Heaney’s selected poems
this just about
makes up the entirety
of our assets
two brown eyes
impulsively ignoring this fact
of
an old iced coffee
sitting in the backseat cupholder
spoiled milk
two brown eyes
impulsively ignoring
an inventory of failures
Otsego Horizon
In the horizon is a city,
Unsure of its name,
Where raindrops are barely audible,
Over the horn of a midnight train,
With boxcars full of salt and needles.
On Maple Street,
the red glow from the stoplight,
In silent rain,
Trickles down the sewer grate.
The city rests,
The woman who sleeps with her window open,
Alien on her black sheets,
Alien amidst the evergreen.
Here it is all still,
Save the train rolling by,
And the hiss of a light,
From the Speedway down the street.
“Once” said Shulamite
“There was nothing here”
There is nothing here now.
What can happen when there is nothing?
Stray cats nestled beneath a blanket of flags,
On the neighbor’s porch.
Seeds
Apple seeds line the altar in the empty church,
Down the one lane dirt road,
They do not grow Shulamite.
The rain stopped coming after the 06 flood,
When the bridge washed out,
And the foundation rotted away.
I'll give a letter to the pastor,
Hopefully he finds some plant food and a good pot,
My eden,
That got rained out,
Like the baseball game I missed as a child,
The pastor too is hungry for apples.
Apple seeds line the altar in the empty church.
Photo of Adrian Frey
BIO: Adrian Frey is a 24 year old poet from Upstate New York. Their work has appeared in APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL and Poem Pilled. Their Instagram is @aj_frey and their Twitter is @slowcorecowboy.