Tyson West
Unforgiven at Fairmont Cemetery
(prose poem)
A mad man's calculated flames climbed the river ridge. I knew at once I
must seek my dissolving dead. Wind whistled my bungalow to a charred
chimney column standing among predestined neighbors fire had forgiven.
Cynthia who died in Jesus, Hazel who drifted off in dementia, Wiley
stabbed in a tavern suddenly and the divorced parents of my old lover
together linger in the smear of green grass and mossy mausoleums among
the zamani of my dog walks. The rent a cop Cerebus stars and bars the
iron gate leaving me park at empty playing fields back by the boneyard.
Wearing a leftover covid mask I slip under the orange sun ball through thick
blue air between patches of green grass, charred ponderosa pine, and grey
stones of dead soldiers standing at attention. At last, I kneel to comfort my
dead.
Bio
Tyson West has published speculative fiction and poetry in free verse, form verse and haiku distilled from his mystical relationship with noxious weeds and magpies in Eastern Washington. He has no plans to quit his day job in real estate.