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‘Postcard from a Forgotten Town’ and other poems by Jim Brosnan

By: Jim Brosnan

Postcard from a Forgotten Town

I wrote phrases,
fragments
of thought,
so many
miles away
as I recalled
train whistles
breaking
evening silence
and headlights
on the nearby
stretches
of highway
passing over
winding hills
as I now watch
lingering embers
leap
from a fireplace
as snowflakes
tumble
across the lawn.

###

Landscape of Reminders

Sleet splatters
the windshield
of my black Jeep
while January
transforms
the Iowa sky
into metal gray
as I slowly pass
snow covered acres,
the south side
of wooden fence posts,
try to recall
the photograph
I snapped last May
outside this town
where I captured
that smudged horizon
at sunset—black
clouds against
a strawberry canvas.

###

Colorless Dreams

On a June morning
with a crisp Sunday
breeze, I follow
the paved state route
curving miles
through small towns
and past covered
bridges in Madison
County, Iowa where
eastern cottonwoods
and shagbark hickory
lean against
the eastern sky
as I listen to oldies
by Presley and Orbison
on Sirius radio,
and for a moment
recall those nights
decades ago.

###

Reading at 8 PM

Having
arrived
in Boulder
for the evening,
I stop at the Innisfree
Poetry Bookstore & Café,
listen to a Free Range poet
engage the interested audience
with images of Colorado landscape.

At the counter
the blond-haired barrister
prepares a Boho mug of black
Conscious Coffee with two sugars
which I sip while indulging in a scone
before scanning the shelves for collections
of poetry by Gary Snyder and Phillip Levine.
I notice the five mahogany blades of the ceiling fan
revolve as they reflect on the tinted glass of the storefront.

I wonder whether you ever
stopped here when you were in this town.

###

In Dreams You Live

In a handful
of lyrical poems
written in the language
of the western plains,
I sketch an indigo sky
in strawberry streaks
along a Wyoming
landscape at sunset,
insert a herd of elk
in the valley below,
add snow-covered
mountain peaks
in the distance,
describe a hike
guided by fireflies
as I court loneliness
and struggle to remember
the novel I finished,
but vividly remember
last night’s dream.

###

Remembering the Embrace

Every few nights
my midnight occupation
takes me across
empty interstates
past eighteen-wheelers
parked on the gravel
shoulders of exit ramps—
truckers asleep in cabs
of Freightliners or Macks,
past truck stops where
black plumes belch
from chrome exhausts
in perfect moonlight.
I continue eastbound
listen to an all-night
country station
out of Laramie
when the lyrics
remind me of you.

###

Dr. Jim Brosnan’s publishing credits include Nameless Roads (Moon Pie Press, 2019), four chapbooks of poetry and over 500 poems most recently appearing in the Aurorean, The Avocet, The Bridge, Crossways (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Literary Yard (India), Nine Muses Poetry (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), and Voices of the Poppies Anthology (UK). Jim has won numerous awards in the annual National Federation of Poetry Societies competition including a second place by the Utah Poetry Society, a third place in Texas, and honorable mentions in Maine and New York. He holds the rank of full professor of English at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI.

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