Ian Randall Wilson

Unsleeping

A cloud passes overhead

bringing 30 seconds

of exceptional rain.

Not enough to raise

the failing reservoirs

more than an eighth of an inch.

The cat prowls

the hallway's outer borders

looking for some

kind of prey.

The floorboards are creaking.

The room shrinks.

Sconce light begins to show its bias,

its unnatural nature

and inability to do more

than make less dim

its tiny corner of the globe.

A river could not meander

less directly.

Enter spirit of the night.

At last the world turns

imperative. Now a dog howls

the way a dog

has howled for these

many million years.

Lights come up.

Words are shouted,

but the tone is very French.

Another cloud burst explodes

with the beat

of at least twenty drummers on the roof.

I'm awake anyway

watching the dark.

I have no exceptional worries

unless the dark begins watching me.

Ian Randall Wilson has published two chapbooks, Theme of the Parabola and The Wilson Poems, both from Hollyridge Press. His fiction and poetry have appeared The Gettysburg Review and Alaska Quarterly Review. He has an MFA in Fiction and in Poetry from Warren Wilson College. By day, he is an executive at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

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David Oliver Cranmer

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