By William R. Stoddart
Mother covers the sunset
on her bedroom wall
with a black velvet Elvis
from a five-and-dime.
The store is long gone,
the remains splayed dark
like coal slurry in a pothole
on a rural road to nowhere.
Her children left long ago,
could no longer wait
for the air to clear,
for clean water to flow,
or dark veins of coal
to close below.
Beyond her gravity,
beyond never-dreamt galaxies,
the sunset returns, spattered
over black velvet, covering
stains from open veins
from far, far below.
William R. Stoddart is a Pushcart-nominated writer from Southwestern Pennsylvania. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paterson Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, and Merion West. His fiction has appeared in Litro, Molotov Cocktail, Literally Stories, and other publications.
