“Buckshot” by John Garmon

Sleet drives down the dark street.

A homeless man puts a shawl

Across his wife’s shoulders

And she sleeps

Or tries to sleep

Propped

Against a stucco wall

Behind an empty store.

It’s getting cold

This time of year.

Hunger this evening

Pelts her dreams

Like buckshot.

And the night

Crawls along

The alley

Like a cold snake.

And the moon appears to rise

From the mountains

Like a slow mirage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Garmon is a writing assistant at the College of Southern Nevada. He has been writing and submitting for 60 years, and his poems have been in Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Paintbrush, The Texas Slough, New Mexico Humanities Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Radius, West, and many other magazines.