David Bart
ONE THOUSAND FRIENDS
Warm green witchgrass patches
a green slope where two boys roll
down, one in muddy swim trunks,
one in a pull-up and red galoshes.
They crash into their big sister
sunning herself, lips synced to a song
as she settles into the lipid crystal
of her iphone. When she was as young
as her brothers, she believed little people
lived inside their mom's radio
but she could never find them
which made her sad. The same odd
sadness she just felt looking at her phone
and a web page's silent assurance
that she has accrued one thousand friends,
but not even one who will come over
to dish or admire her tan. Her little brothers
will soon be called inside because the east
end of the sky has begun to crackle
and turn black, the west is a smoldering
carotene dusk and she's ending another
summer day with a handful of tiny people
inside a screen who entreat her to touch
and follow.
THERE WAS A MAN
"Give it to me."
The quivering thief
was awakened by a charnel
growl and chalky phalanges
probing his bedclothes
for the gold ring he pinched.
With fingers crimped into a pink.
claw, my son reads me the tale.
Flashlight grazes his cheekbones.
It's the kind of story told
by those near life's mysterious ends:
grandmother and boys.
The kind Shakespeare's Prince Mamilius
would have told the queen.
After a few words the child was interrupted.
Soon after, he died.
But my young son already knows the tale
from the prince's one and only line.
"There was a man dwelt by a churchyard."
David A. Bart (DavidABart.com) is a writer from Arlington, Texas. His poetry appears in I-70 Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Slipstream, Sixfold, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Margie, Cider Press Review, San Pedro River Review, Illya's Honey and Red River Review and three anthologies from Mutabilis Press: The Weight of Addition, Untameable City and The Enchantment of the Ordinary. He conducts creative writing workshops and teaches music on the elementary level.