Agoloso Presents - Atondido Stories Agoloso Presents - Mama Mada | Page 246

Mama Mada
Cusp by David O’Hanlon
It was taken by James that first summer.
The angle’s pretty low
but you can still see the river:
that thin dark crack through the background.
We’re both sat cross-legged –
me knotting grass, you saluting the sun –
our knees almost touch
like God’s hand and Adam’s…
I use it as a bookmark (for now
it marks my whereabouts in Fournier’s
Lost Estate) because with each look,
each dose of it, my tolerance increases.
It has a few nicks, a few folds.
It’s about to begin to fade.
Scarecrow by Bre tt Evans
Reaping nothing from what’s been sown,
arms outstretched, forsaken,
he wears his unkempt crown; king
of the hand-me-down. Dressed
forever in the same tattered rags
that suck the wind through or hang
from his frame with the weight
of the morning’s rain, he sways;
a metronome to an orchestra
of gale and sleet. This son of Man
is blind to purpose, rooted in solitude
and cannot find a voice to yawp
back into the squall; no sermons,
no parables, no disciples or flock.
Not even the birds.
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