woman suffocating under skyless clouds

Steve Gerson

bovine in her way
dressed uniformly in muddied russet
glazed cow-stare straight
like vacant windows in farm outbuildings
black as eyeless sockets

she endures self-stockaded
as if muzzling stray blades
of grass on barren browned fields
downward gazing under leafless trees
every day a late fall

not always so numbed
she once effervesced
I recall her eyes uplifted yearning
after passing planes flying elsewhere
contrails etching sun-streaked paths

but life intervened siloing her
a romance denied her moans lowing
a career curtailed cowering
friendships family all plowed under
climate changes in her soul
till tariffed by slights her sights low
she ruminates suffocating under skyless clouds

Steve Gerson is an emeritus English professor from a Midwestern community college, writes poetry about life’s dissonance and dynamism. He’s proud to have published in Panoplyzine (winning an Editor’s Choice award), The Hungry Chimera, Toe Good, The Write Launch, Ink & Voices, Duck Lake, Coffin Bell, Poets Reading the News, Crack the Spine, White Wall Review, Abstract, and Pinkley Press.

© Variant Literature Inc 2021