From WTP Vol. VI #5

Thank the Wind Alive
By Douglas Cole

I tell stories to nothing but the walls,
and the photographs are floating away.
The old ones said that three’s a crowd,
and I got used to thinking that way,
figured there was a bad vein inside me,
silent kid just observing at Thanksgiving,
bewildered and climbing onto the bus,
heading into serious enemy territory,
ghetto with violent eyes in dirt yards.
It’s tough to mythologize basement pipes
in gym class or the last five minutes we kept
silent to get out and the afternoon gauntlet,
home safe at last with the best gods I knew
coming through the glow of a television set.

Douglas Cole has published four collections of poetry and a novella. His work appears in anthologies such as Best New Writing, Bully Anthology, and Coming Off the Line, and in journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Chiron, The Galway Review, Red Rock Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Slipstream. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, and has received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry, judged by T.R. Hummer; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House, and First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway.