FALLEN

 

The sky is a steel mixing bowl upside-down

with fat metal tears clinging.

Oh how the leaves silver in the wind

then green again in a patch of shade.

 

The air is variegated marble—cold

from passed rain. No color but grey.

Not gray, but grey. The color of fences

forgotten. The color of dead fish.

 

The college girls wear grey and call it

"charcoal" or "dove." They grey their coffee

with powdered milk and trendy raw sugar.

The professors grey and stiffen in shale winds.

 

The fountain lays still and the pigeons quiet.

Nothing moves in the wind. The world is a stone

graveyard, carved under a steel bowl.

A grey yard waiting for white.

Stephanie De Haven is a master's student at the University of Texas. The experience has taught her that she was not meant to live further west than the Sabine River, nor further north than the Mason-Dixon line. She plans to leave for the south as soon as the ink dries on her diploma. More about her at: http://snuffy_chan.livejournal.com.

Dance to Death, Issue V

©2008 Sorrowland Press and all respective artists within.