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  Table of contents Issue Twenty-six CORPSE TOWN, NORTHERN NEW MEXICO
by JAMES ROBERT RUDOLPH		 Home  
   
 

Dust is unrested here
by boot heel, snake belly, priest hem
silver mined here we’re told
a long time ago.

Buildings should feel abandoned,
opera house, dentist’s office but
bare closets, behind walls feel full.
The sun scorches nightcrawlers
into dark lairs but the night’s
black air is dead
with unrespirated breath.

Bats jerk across a noon sky
scarred dogs bark, settle scores,
animals absorb the unquiet
on this hot, still day then
a dry squall rolling, its
parameters invisible yet seen
agitates the uncleansed.
Time we go.
   
   

 

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James Robert Rudolph is retired after a busy career in health care and education in Minneapolis, having returned to old haunts in northern New Mexico. He believes in old-style magical realism, inspired by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the high desert, and the deep, broad sky of the American mountain west. Creatively he aspires to the crafting of work that expresses honest experience in beautiful language, complex or simple, as serves the work’s purpose. His poems have appeared in The Artistic Muse, Mad Swirl, Black Heart Magazine, Poetry Pacific, and Poetry Super Highway, among others.



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