Fall 2011 - The University of Scranton

Pale Green
Lori Green
Seven, his age.
Bowed, his spine,
Those shoulders warped as wood
With nerves as shaken as a train yard’s
One room apartment.
Strange scars are there, and brazen pains
Shooting, throbbing, blooming into precious bruise
Formations, signs which scream and stamp,
Too obvious, even as his stories bend themselves
And shift inside out, feigning the innocence
Of a child’s golden age
Which he gazes at now, aloof, or with longing.
The day is hotter than mercury can read.
The sun’s own weight bashes my lungs.
He sits now, on tanned stalks of grass, his
Summer legs folded over themselves,
Little Yogi with eyes unstrained and
Aimed at his right knee.
Sitting across from him, I look too.
A pale green moth, sized as his fingernails,
It sits, crawls slow, rests once more, wings
Thin as a hair and rounded neatly toward
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