by Allen Shadow
It was the coffee in the mornings
with the one poached egg on rye
the smell somehow staying with me
well beyond his walking into the living room naked
and the cops coming to take him away
to that place where lost men yell intermittently
and women bob and cry
and where I came to hold his trembling hand
as he slumped over drooling
and my sobbing at the caving
of the man who once held up the world
Finalist, Summer 2022 Poetry International Tiny Chapbook Competition