TWO POEMS BY JASON FRALEY


          Imprint


          This fast –

          a monochrome landscape, paralysis.

          No, not a hallucination, the retina’s ghost.

          These are shells of last year’s snow drifts.

          Where is my body’s shapeless imprint?

          When my sunglasses toppled into traffic.

          Ever since, the world pulses with hazy light.

          Even now, slush-lodged pebbles blur into stitches of text.

          That long since divine trauma, an attempt at up.

          She pulls on my fedora – not until we have room to pull over.


          Dream Sequence 93: Onward, Onward


          All these blank pages. Pink flurries. I have erased everything. I am a hospice whisper. Its
          doors have closed. Not for the lack of dying. Rather, the multiple choice entrance exam: no
          questions, page after page of c) 100 years. Which is daunting even to those without oxygen
          tanks. I cannot make the commitment. I still covet rudimentary siege weapons. For example,
          the catapult. Here are the blueprints for something that exists only as a museum exhibit. Where
          it no longer hurls cauldrons of tar through fog. By now, all the enemy soldiers have zippered
          mouths. Some advice for the generals: violence has a distinct sound. Not the sound of
          snapping grass beneath wheels. Even if that’s how I imagine Greek fire. Rediscovered. This
          water in my mouth will do nothing.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Jason Fraley works at an investment firm in West Virginia and is pursing his MBA. His wife and cat see him occasionally. He has appeared or is forthcoming in Forklift Ohio, Redactions, The Hat, Pebble Lake Review, Caketrain,, and No Tell Motel.


BACK TO EXPERIMENT 6