Friday, December 17, 2021

Bone By John Riley

 



He has no need to pull up and search for the last bits of bone. There is little chance of finding any. The splinters may have tempted a fox, or flew away in the beak of the crow nested above the fig bush. Perhaps he should search closer to the well-house. His feet would leave deeper prints in the soft soil there. Why wonder? He has no cause to search for the bones that fell from the scaffold once erected in the oak's shadows. He can now go to the coast and watch his moments concentrate sunlight on the sea.





John Riley has published poetry and fiction in Smokelong Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Better Than Starbucks, Banyan Review, Connotation Press, Bindweed, Fiction Daily, The Molotov Cocktail, Dead Mule, St. Anne's Review, and numerous other anthologies and journals both online and in print. EXOT Books will publish a volume of 100 of his 100-word prose poems in 2022. He worked in educational publishing for many years and has published over forty books of nonfiction for young readers.


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