Kristian O’Hare

Bodies running bodies falling bodies
crawling the ground all wormy with
wounded.

Strangers holding hands
praying pleading orisons stitch by stitch
between sob & sigh.

Fear of dying
of becoming a statistic
a name on a screen
at the end of a local news program.

What photo will they use? A high school
picture senior year you with crooked bangs
that brace-face acne-bruised a turtle neck sprouting
through the neckline of a wooly sweater?

You hope for the most recent Facebook profile pic
of you camping with your buddies up in Tuolumne Meadows
after hiking to the top of Lembert Dome its granite surface
like the moon staring down at the edge
scalloped rock trimmed in bright green foliage
out on that edge
afraid
& alive.

Maybe I’ll survive, you think.

After the gunfire ceases
little rags of cloud linger.

An uncomfortable calm
the wilt of a moon & no stars.

The air still glows with the heat of a perished day.

 

Kristian O’Hare is a playwright and poet. His plays have been produced or developed in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, LA, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. In August 2013, his full-length play Like Poetry had a successful run in the New York International Fringe Festival.  In March 2015, he was a finalist at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival for his poetry.  His poems have appeared in Cobalt Review, Fourteen Hills, and Mud Season Review.