The Cello
Sometimes he was a cello calling
for a cello has legs and breathes
the tension from above the holes
we all can see even from seats
in the rear of the old auditoriums,
holes shaped like dancing crooked lips,
but he knows now that such thinking
was part of the walk he’d been assigned
and the cello sound only came through
on upright days when the tilt of his throat
quieted the projection of pleas resonant
as the snap of a bridge’s strings,
and now, sitting there, head full of circles,
he hears no pleas, no cello.
Blue Petals
She tends her garden
in a nun’s habit bought
in the second-hand shop,
trims the shrubs, mows
the grass with a push mower,
dreams of a garden
like the one the nuns nourish,
blue flowers blooming
fragile petals,
thin roots slipping
through the soil in need
of watering daily,
such slight plants,
lovelier than the green
sturdy shrubs she trims
with a set of cutters
so heavy her shoulders ache
and her wrists ring
with pain echoing up
her arms at night as she
dresses for bed
in the cotton gown
that sweeps across her feet
when she kneels
beside her bunk.
John Riley has published poetry and fiction in Smokelong Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks, Banyan Review, Connotation Press, Fiction Daily, The Molotov Cocktail, Dead Mule, St. Anne’s Review, and numerous other anthologies and journals both online and in print. He has also written over thirty books of nonfiction for young readers and continues his work in educational publishing.
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