Issue 28 | Fall 2021

The Sun As An Empath

Whoever left the Sun in charge of light was a wishful thinker

The Sun burns skulls examining
Traumatized by every drop of blood steaming away

The sun shines deep his bawdy light into shrewd strangers

John Wayne shooting from the hip
Haloed like no other   Buffalo Bill with a shine
Peeking through the transom of his garage door

To see   Not to do   To understand what happened and why
And this is the failure of the gambit   Sun’s little empath hat
Shrouded everywhere with too much gas
Earth thinks it started
When he visited the escape game galaxy

Searching so bright   He burned through every wall   Could not participate
With the other bodies   Even in simulacra

He spread his rays wide searching
A single finite entity to cool his fever pitch

Fixed on a single point   His gaze burns ambient bodies
Whole planets freeze in the shade of those sunspots

Filed under: Poetry

Ryan Bollenbach is a writer and musician living in Houston, Texas. He formerly served as the poetry editor for Black Warrior Review in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is the online fiction editor for Gulf Coast and reads poetry and prose for Heavy Feather Review. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, Sink Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Snail Trail Press, and elsewhere. Reach out on Twitter @SilentAsIAm or visit his website.