The Wind Outside
by and published in Edition Six of Pomegranate
is like a barrelling tubetrain with failed brakes.
It shakes the scaffolding’s bones. It’s Charlton
Heston rattling the bars at his jailer apes.
It’s wind with its hair down, wind with a hard-on,
with nothing better to do. Town-crier,
‘end is nigh’er, horseman (headless), failure.
It’s Brando’s big scene in A Streetcar Named Desire,
vertigo, Ahab, chimera, drunk sailor.
It punches the tarpaulin, gets tangled in it.
The fight lasts an hour – the thug wind wins,
crosses the window like ransacking soldiers
crossing a trapdoor, beneath which, for minute
on minute we lie, clenched tight as tins.
Then the wind jumps off – and blows out – and smoulders
Jon Stone
Jon Stone is poetry editor of the roundtable review and production editor of Fuselit magazine. His writing has previously appeared in places like The Wolf, Mimesis, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Bizarre magazine. His collection ‘I’ll Show You Tyrants’ is due out from bluechrome probably some time after he finishes trying to make it Really Really Good. He lives in Jack the Ripper country.