I dreamed our city’s slender attitude,
of ruined moonlight
in the bombs. The dreamer’s femur is
the squeaky wheel. If love could only speak
and never hear, she said
between the bombs. I loved her
safe route to mercy. Lyme disease
and bombs had similar inaccuracies. On foot
she wandered through
pretentious fire. You wouldn’t think to
look at death, she said
at night, the doctor who delivered it
was darkness. As fever struck the garbage
dump, I dreamt I was her Carthage.
—
Jake Sheff is a major and pediatrician in the US Air Force. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and was a finalist in the Rondeau Roundup’s 2017 triolet contest. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).
The Zingara Project 