Undertow

Hunting rock pool shells
At sunrise, the tide tugging
My child’s toes too soon

Ryan Stone

Coal Town

Birds don’t stop in this town.
I see them fly past, black peppering
blue, going someplace. I’ve given up
dreaming wings. This town
will know my bones. Condoms
sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds
but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile
of those steel-eyed shrews
who linger late after church.
I walked half a day, out past the salt flats,
after they closed the movie house down. Smoked
the joint she’d brought back from college
when she returned to bury my dad.
I remember how pale her fingers lay
across my father’s hands –
coal miner’s hands, tarred like his lungs;
like this town.

Ryan Stone

First published in Eunoia Review, July 2016.

Winner of the Goodreads Monthly Poetry Contest, August 2016.

First Place in Poetry Nook contest 101, November 2016.

Free-fall

Tumbling russet leaf
How brief the rush of freedom
Between bough and earth

Ryan Stone

Drought Town

This is the summer of red dust. Everything
sucked dry—hollow as cicada husks, wedged
under eaves and porch stairs—waiting
for a wind change. On the road out of town,
empty grain silos loom, perched like headstones
over wheat-field graves. Harvesters sag, tyres
cracked like the asphalt. Rotting carcasses
litter riverless beds—tongues swollen,
flyblown, unslaked. First, a wheeze,
then my pickup spews steam. It dies in a ditch
under a burnt-orange sun. Tiger snake chunks
graffiti the hood’s underside, one blind eye bulging
from the torn head. It must have sought shade
or wiper water—sliding up from the parched earth
miles back. Now it’s just one more dead thing
in a land of dead things. This is the summer
of red dust. It swirls and the road ahead blurs.

– Ryan Stone

first published by Eunoia Review

Trust

Soft snores beside me
A wheaten curl of warm sleep
Outside the wind howls

Ryan Stone

Hunger

Her silver net cast
She scurries back under eave
Lunchtime drawing near

Ryan Stone

Willow

By a mountain lake
Naked limbs dance with the wind
Winter stole her shawl

Ryan Stone

Anadromous

She swims up Main Street
A pink flash against the flow
Seeking calm waters

Ryan Stone

Reflection

The lake’s still surface
Sips a tequila sunrise
Last days of summer

Ryan Stone

Ashtray Girl

A tiger’s red eye blinking—
she sucked each joint
to ash, slid her hands
past no return,
snatched
my hard-earned cash.

She surfed a wave of whiskey
past the breakers
each new dawn,
claimed every song
worth singing
remained as yet unsung.

I met her and grew old
with her, with only
one regret—
our spark flared
bright, but faded fast;
a burnt-out cigarette.

Ryan Stone