| |
Tenderness
By Laurie Barton
At night, the Kurt Cobain action figure jumps off the shelf and walks across the Toys R Us parking lot. Working a bigger hole into the hem of his jeans. Shivering slightly in his brown Pendleton, stubble fighting to break through the plastic of his cheek. At the edge of the parking lot, Tundras and Sequoias barrel down the 210 East. Next to a broken light pole, he waits for the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald. They like to talk about things. How there was not enough attention, and then suddenly, too much. Bad fights with wives. There are times when Kurt needs Lee to hold him softly, to hum a Russian lullaby.
Laurie Barton lives in southern California, where she teaches English to speakers of other languages. Her poetry has appeared in juked, Prick of the Spindle, Two Hawks Quarterly, Phantom Seed, and The Rambler. In 2008 she won the New Southerner Literary Prize in Poetry. She edits poetry for The Sylvan Echo, an online literary journal published by graduates of the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles.
© 2009-2010 prickofthespindle.com |
