by David Estringel

Published in Issue No. 272 ~ January, 2020

Life is slow

here in a border town

where lazy palms

scantly twitch in dead breezes—

dry and pollen-choked.

Everywhere.

Nowhere.

Cattle,

brown against my hand

and an expanse of cloudless blue,

meander aimlessly,

chewing cud

that never quite hits the spot.

Their eyes, like minds—

blank—

close to things made new

by the blessing of the sun,

cast downward

upon cracks and clods of grey clay

underfoot,

where a fire burns beneath the ground.

Life is slow

here in a border town,

where—in-kind—

like a shadow

I wait for a shift,

the balm of a breeze

to kiss the delicate yellow from the retama

and pave my road.

Everywhere.

Nowhere.

Noon rages overhead

(Devil’s at the crossroads)

as flames whip and lick the sky,

beckoning

just beyond the watery promise

of the horizon.

So, I close my eyes

here in this border town—

everywhere,

nowhere—

seeing white and the blood

that courses through my veins,

dig my toes into the ground, and slowly

burn.

 

 

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David Estringel is poet and writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, & essays. His work has been accepted and/or published by Specter Magazine, Literary Juice, Foliate Oak Magazine, Terror House Magazine, Expat Press, 50 Haikus, littledeathlit, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Route 7 Review, Setu Bilingual Journal, Paper Trains Literary Journal, The Elixir Magazine, Soft Cartel, Harbinger Asylum, Briars Lit, Open Arts Forum, Cajun Mutt Press, Former People Journal, The Ugly Writers, Writ in Dust, Cephalopress, Twist in Time, Merak Magazine, Salt Water Soul, Cherry House Press, Subterranean Blue Poetry, Printed Words, Sunflower Sutras, Tulip Tree Publishing, Salt Ink, PPP Ezine, Digging through the Fat, Haiku Journal, Foxhole Magazine, The Basil O’Flaherty, Three Line Poetry, Agony Opera, Siren’s Call Ezine, Alien Buddha Press, Synchronized Chaos, Pantheon of Poesy, The @baffled Haiku Daily, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Blue Nib, Fishbowl Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Rigorous Magazine, Corvus Review, Spillwords.com, Proletaria Journal, Cherry Magazine, Bleached Butterfly, Poetry Pea (Haiku Pea), Sub Rosa Zine, TL;DR Press, Spit Poet Zine, Arthut, ICOE Press, Logos, Z Publishing, Outcast Magazine, Ponder Savant, Impspired Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Poetizer, Channillo, and The Good Men Project. He is currently a Contributing Editor (fiction) at Red Fez, an editor/writer/Artist in Residence at The Elixir Magazine, fiction reader at riverSedge, Poetry Editor at Fishbowl Press, Artist in Residence at Cajun Mutt Press, and columnist at Channillo. David’s first book of poetry and prose Indelible Fingerprints was published by Alien Buddha Press April 2019. David can be found on Twitter (@The_Booky_Man) and his website at http://davidaestringel.com.