Tag Archives: Radius

A City Like a Dead Man by Jake Sheff

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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).

 

“Safe” by Karlo Sevilla

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“Along the sidewalk,
always safest along the sidewalk,”
father used to say.
(A truck may swerve,
roll over the sidewalk
and pin you against
a lamppost…)
Still, always safest
along the sidewalk.

I wear my brand new pair
of Air Jordan while I walk
on the sidewalk.
(They’re affordable
and look and feel great
as the real deal.)

I’m safe as I stroll
with my shoes
on the sidewalk.

—

Karlo Sevilla is the author of “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Radius, Matter, Yellow Chair Review, Eunoia, Poetry24, The Ramingo’s Porch, Ariel Chart, In Between Hangovers, in the anthologies of Peacock Journal, Eternal Remedy, Riverfeet Press, and Azoth Khem Publishing, and elsewhere.