Marc Sheehan
Barn, Collapsed
It’s neither your barn
nor your collapse,
so why should you care
that the roof now covers
rubble neatly
as if a demolitions expert
planted perimeter charges
to implode it only
after the ghost of the gentle
poet Issa evacuated the last
owl, field mouse,
and litter of feral cats.
But say the barn is the country.
Then isn’t the barn yours,
as well as the collapse? No,
because then you’d have some say
in where the owls and mice
and cats and gentleness went. No,
only the caring is yours.
Marc J. Sheehan is the author of two full-length poetry collections —— Greatest Hits (New Issues Press) and Vengeful Hymns (Ashland Poetry Press), and a chapbook of poems, Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper Midwestern Melancholy (Split Rock Review). He has published stories, poems, essays and reviews in numerous literary magazines including Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. His flash fiction has been featured on NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction series as well as on the program Selected Shorts. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.
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