Bandits came to an abandoned coal mine with roses in their teeth. I don’t know what they were running from, but they sure came a long way by moonlight. They set up camp outside the old shaft and laughed and hooted with their whiskey stories, clapping and guffawing. The next morning they lowered Tobacco Jim into the mine. Bats whirled all around him. Snakes and cobras watched him kneel down before a chasm that was like the golden anus of the universe. On the other side were coral reefs made of pure gold. The last they heard of him was a mermaid laugh when he cut the rope and leapt through strata, centuries and evolution. You could say he dove into a prism, dimensionally, but no one ever asks zebras, right Mr. Baldwin?
August Smith received his MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Cornell University. Born and raised in NY, he has been travelling the country for the past two years. In these pandemic times his perambulations are circumscribed within Alpine, TX, where he writes and photographs. His poems have appeared, among other places, in Wide Open magazine and The Great American Poetry Anthology (1988). You can connect with him at facebook.com/AugustPoet.