Coming Home During an Indian Summer

by Samuel J Fox

Andrew Castillo

In my quiet town, the maples bear their greenage like trumpets floundering in some indeterminable fanfare.

I return to the remnant of a field where I buried my boyhood memories.

The moon is slipping into her silk blouse while God is busy stacking my luck into a house of cards.

I walk to the dilapidated barn where I witnessed angels casting dice above me in the mice-filled rafters.

The wind plays the periphery of acacia bushes, their leaves reverberating like violas. Now an adult, I am lost in this world of discovering myself.

I wave at an aged devil, wearing a negligee of flies, unpotting withered plants behind the leaning house that belonged to my youthful nightmares.

Somewhere, music drops like a curtain and a dead lover loosens her skirt behind me.

My old street sign has fallen over like a poorly played poker hand.

I’ve come only to visit the horses, mingling in the trembling reeds: they meander toward my open hands. They come to me without judgement.

A pothole filled with stagnant water reflects me as I walk away while humming a lullaby for the damned and the newly departing.

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Samuel J Fox is a bisexual poet and essayist writing out of the Southern US. He is poetry editor for Bending Genres and appears in numerous online and print journals; he also frequents graveyards, dilapidated places, and coffee-shops depending. He tweets (@samueljfox).