He sits on the porch
every day
even in the cold
then he wears a parka
it looks like he’s playing
checkers all by himself
he might be drawing up
plans for public architecture
sitting there alone
in front of his brown brick house
he probably built himself
thinking one day he’d have a family
there’s not much of a view
trees, traffic, church steeples
hard landscape
skewed on a hillside,
and I can’t read his
sorrow quotient, if any,
and he can’t even see
me when I go by
all I know is harmonic rock
can cause a train
or even a brick house
to derail.
L.B. Sedlacek is an award winning poet and author with poetry and fiction appearing in many different journals and zines. Her latest poetry books are The Adventures of Stick People on Cars (Alien Buddha Press), The Architect of French Fries (Presa Press), and Words and Bones (Finishing Line Press). She is a former Poetry Editor for ESC! Magazine and also co-hosted the podcast for the small press, Coffee House to Go, for several years. She teaches poetry at local elementary and middle schools and publishes a free resource for poets, The Poetry Market Ezine. In her free time, LB enjoys swimming, reading, and taking guitar lessons.