by Jim Ross
In Which We Prove That We Are Still Alive
The grass had been abraded in places from the movement of bodies creating barren patches where nothing would grow
the sunlight was golden and strong baking the earth into a new hardness
I heard a story that someone had made a video recording of this entire process the idea being to use it within a movie
speeded up and used as a kind of allegory that could help to explain the lead character’s motivation – but this may not have been true
what is true is that nobody wants to grow old as much as you might tell yourself that you are a better person now
and that while your raw intelligence may have slightly diminished your ideas have a level of richness and complexity that was not available to your youthful self
there are bushes along the edge of the worn grass with sparrows nesting deep within the heart of them protected from predatory eyes
they dart out among the columns of brilliant light that scatter across the almost colorless surface of the baked mud catching flies in their sharp beaks
like us they use motion and sound to prove that they are still alive.
Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter. He was born in Barnsley in the north of England, and attended Royal Holloway College, University of London, for his Bachelor’s degree. He now lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has published several chapbooks, including Pain Sections from Alien Buddha Press, and This Liquid World, an e-chap from Voice Luxe. FB: @pilechko ; Instagram: @njscattista.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding research career. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in eight years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid, and plays in 200 journals on five continents. Photo publications include Burningword, Camas, DASH, Feral, Litro, Kestrel, Phoebe, Stonecoast, Sweet, and Typehouse. He is a 2024 Best of the Net nominee in Art.