March Excavated from the Hard Dirt of an Empty Lot

by Sean Thomas Dougherty

In the faint light of smoke drifting from the refinery and forsythia climbing along the chain-link fence, there is no burning gasoline can or the lost faces limping toward emergency rooms after being shot in the foot. There is no small girl crying for her mother who left her in the playground covered with used needles. This late in the AM there is only the symphony of a hundred dead gulls along the jagged mussel shell strewn shore. The frozen jag of the 100-foot freighter docked. This late what is left but the elegy wind, in the room dark as Goya?