Olga Klekner

Evening Drive
  
I am back in America.
Bars bloom the unemployed and cigarette smoke.
Sidewalks lie empty of music
in front of unlit houses
growing For Sale signs.
 
The night is dark, limbless, hungry,
I can't rub it off my forehead.
Like bile, it pours on the perforated street
digesting potholes, rubber, pollen, Michigan.
The evening fills my mouth, my belly,
like my liver, it braces itself
for the second glass of wine.
 
It's getting late.
Jimsonweed stopped trumpeting
the sun, marshes recall hawks with dihedral flights.
Snails no longer dine and copulate on dandelions.
 
I pass apple blossoms
with a hint of their poisonous seeds.
I think about Old Age.
I can't leave it alone,
because that, too, is fear and it's already spreading
where shadows remain a sea of silent crickets.



Also from Olga Klekner:
Ode to Lake Erie
At the Cottage in Amherstburg

Contributor Bio

Olga Klekner lives in the United States, Canada and her native Hungary. Appearing in five anthologies and numerous issues of Lyceum, she has also won several recognitions for her poetry, including first prizes from the LAND Poetry and the Frances G. Barrett Creative Writing Contests. She is also an established photographer.