Blake Lynch

3 pm, late autumn, on the hill

leading up to the dark parts

of town, the buses are empty.

Her backpack is busted.

She left the bar late and fell

into the bushes lining the sidewalk.

No one notices the chipped

soles and the birdlike ankles

of the girl from Bloomington.

Her coat is ill fitting, bought

after hours, stoned under

the blue moon of Wal-Mart.

She will not let me follow her

home where she will hide, until she

cuts him loose and starts sleeping

on the couch in his absence.

She’d call it grace —

to sit in bed with a cigarette

in one corner of her mouth

admiring how the moon fell

on the dumpster below her window.

 

Blake Lynch’s publishing credits include Chelsea, King Log, Poetry Motel, 2River, Stray Branch, the Oakbend Review, Potomac, Zygote in My Coffee, Forge, 491, Shampoo, and the Rusty Nail, among others.