Reservation

Driving through outdoor ghetto of
empty bottles, strewn trash, people collected by store.
Scraps of paper, torn and white, drift, float, and litter.

Haunted reservation, memory cut off, two-thirds lost,
Haunted by phantom riders roaming far on grassy slope
        by sharp, clear morning and easy star-filled night
        by denial, fast, and vision.

Dying reservation, dreams with no more life,
dying from fence, machine, and road
        from imprisoning isolation and untouchable expanse
        from indulgence, excess, and despair.

Looking at tenements of trailer and mud
scattered cans, dumped garbage, families by communal stove
wisps of smoke, pungent and blue, rising, drifting – away.

Away from reservation
        from spirit, dream, and fire
        to fence, ghost, and death.

J. B. Hogan has a four-story e-book, Near Love Stories, now online at Cervena Barva Press (www.cervenabarvapress.com). He also has over forty-five stories and thirty poems in such journals as: Word Catalyst, Istanbul Literary Review, Cynic Online Magazine, Admit 2 (forthcoming), Every Day Fiction, Every Day Poetry, Ranfurly Review, Dead Mule, The Scruffy Dog Review, Smokebox, Aphelion, Rumble, The Swallow’s Tail, Poesia, Bewildering Stories, Avatar Review, Copperfield Review, Ascent Aspirations, Megaera, The Pedestal Magazine, Dogwood Journal, Mastodon Dentist, Poets Against War, The Square Table, Raving Dove, Mobius, and Viet Nam Generation. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Find more by J. B. Hogan in the Author Index.

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