Tyson West
Elegy for Hawkings
Pi day twenty eighteen
I scrounge Bud Light cans along Northwest Boulevard
The red hound braids her urine
With the scat of chihuahua and coyote.
Surviving clouds of a front from the Gulf of Alaska
Splotch and splatter across horizons.
Trolling for haiku I lie skunked
In the prop wash of Hawkings' final weightless flight
An SUV sloshes out another beer can as its mass accelerates by
Studs scraping the asphalt.
Between clouds rorschaching above the sewage plant
Adorned in salmon pink lights huddled by the black river
The stars reorder themselves.
Bio
Tyson West lives in Eastern Washington in smoke and dust on the bottom of an Ice Age flood plain.
He enjoys reciting his poetry to magpies and coyotes.
He has published poetry and speculative fiction in various genres in "Fast Forward Festival",
Voluted Tales, and in anthologies "Warlords of the Asteroid Belt", and "You Can't Kill Me I'm Already Dead".
He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry collection "Home-Canned Forbidden Fruit"
is available from Gribble Press.
His novella "Mall of the Damned" was published
in 2014 by Red Dashboard Publishing, LLC.
He received Third Place in the 2018 Kalanithi Award for his rondel 'Under the Bridge.' He is also a member of the Furry Writer's Guild and listed on the "Haiku Registry."