by Bradley McIlwain
I see him sitting squat-legged
beside a cup of coins on the
sidewalk
looking up at me with glinting
eyes
in between puffs of a fading
cigarette,
his eyes were a blue glass hung
inside a stone cathedral that cut
you when the light would hit it,
and made you freeze if only for
a moment,
and forget again whatever it was
that you were thinking of.
In some ways he is Piranesi’s
Prison,
his frame a twisted staircase of
winding bone, hollow, ghost in
a machine,
epigraph of agony –
age has withered away the details,
a Godly sculpture crafted of the
finest clay,
this could have been Michelangelo’s
David, once,
one autumn morning before sunrise
sitting in a studio of shit,
his life reduced to a cup of coins.
Bradley McIlwain is a Canadian based writer and poet. His work has appeared in The Copperfield Review, Frostwriting, Rope and Wire, Wanderings Magazine, New Verse News, and others.
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