red booth

review

issue e18teen



















 

Light
But I think for me it was the beginning
of empathy, not a large empathy
like the deeply selfless might have,
more like a leaning, . . .
   - Stephen Dunn,Empathy
Light never centers itself in the marrow,
or the hinged diagram of swinging doors
that make up your life.  It never stores
itself like embers, burning through each narrow
extremity until it exits your singed
fingertips.  Instead it leans you away from the noted expectancies 
of "Every Man's Road", to where the dead are buried, 
where the battered live on the fringe

of existence, where suffering is louder
than rain.  It's there that it meets you face
to face, refracting itself in the warm
colors of enchantment (and the clouded
hue of melancholy), leaving you to retrace
the sacred out of another's - torrid storm.
 

- Barry Ballard
 
 
 
  

Barry's poetry has most recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, The Apalachee Review, and Puerto del Sol.  His most recent collection is Plowing To The End of the Road (Finishing Line Press, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize).  He writes from Burleson, Texas..
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