BROWSE Columns
✕
Builder’s chute –
come great thunderer
this crisp dawn
and loose upon a prone city
the song of your proboscis!
*
Straddling
the bypass-lane
a fat brace
of power lines droops
like a knowing smile
*
Checking round
after the bird-strike
I find nothing
but an indignant smear –
so goes the corner office
*
On the line
of late afternoon
and evening
a high, unseen keening
waves mining the sea-cliff
*
One degree
above freezing –
how the neon
and seagulls flash
down dealership row
Image by Abdolhassan Fazeli.
James Roderick Burns is the author of The Unregulated Heart, a collection of four novellas, one flash fiction volume, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and five collections of short-form poetry (most recently, Crows at Dusk, 2023). His stories have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he serves as Staff Reader in Poetry for Ploughshares. His newsletter A Bunch of Fives offers one free, published story a fortnight (abunchoffives.substack.com). He can be found on Twitter @JamesRoderickB.
