At a far place
over a gelid fjord
(a silver knife
at dawn)
boiling codflesh
all his life
for thirty years
he’s forgotten the feel of his hands
at first frost
he opens the door
inviting murderous winter but
cold does no harm
that starveling chill can’t rise
to his prison of light
can’t ascend
the helix of steps
now
only this world’s beauty
can hurt him
Jonathan Louis Duckworth is an MFA student at Florida International University, where he serves as a reader and copy-editor for the Gulf Stream Magazine. His fiction and poetry appears in or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Fourteen Hills, Cha, Off the Coast, and elsewhere.
