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Timothy Gager

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This Poem is Like a Bruise

This poem is like a bruise
A deep black Lake Superior knocking
over the white caps rolling into last breaths

An angry purple from the rage of red
until the flattening of color blends
into a subdued yellow of surrender

If you’re weak of heart
this poem is not a holiday,
It does not twinkle, nor

Are its words, lights from a city
observed upon the descent
each, a pushpin of hope

If you wait, there is just a tiny ripple
when a coin is flipped into a well
hallow, the eye-socket, black, and empty

Timothy Gager is the author of fourteen books of short fiction and poetry. Every Day There Is Something About Elephants, a book of 108 flash fictions, selected by over fifty-five editors, was released by Big Table Publishing in 2018. He's the former host of the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has had over 500 works of fiction and poetry published and of which thirteen have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has been read on National Public Radio. 


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