ABSTRACT

I’ve turned being awake into a practice,
hear the rain’s soft approach and feel called,
God throwing pebbles at the window.

My wife stirs as I pat the dark to find
yesterday’s jeans, yesterday’s socks,
a sweater branded with yesterday’s job.

The rain is loud on the sunroom’s metal roof.
I stand back from the tall windows like a man
trying to appreciate an abstract painting,

the lower thirds Rothko’d with leafy black,
the sky’s translucent darkness layered above
and Pollack’d with wires and a gap of stars.

The Metro sounds lonely as a freight train.
I remember being inside those bright rectangles,
speeding west, heads bowed as if in prayer.

By Charles Duffie

Biography:

Charles Duffie is a writer working in the Los Angeles area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books, So It Goes (The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library), Anastamos, Bacopa Literary Review, Prime Number Magazine, Exposition Review, Mojave River Press, Meat for Tea, Heavy Feather Review, FlashBack Fiction, Riggwelter, and American Fiction by New Rivers Press.