Another Ending

you tell
a stranger’s story
because your own…well

They’re all fungible anyway,
right?

A man…no make it a woman,
is on an ascending escalator:
halfway, she imagines a goat

about to be devoured by a panther
that used to be her ex.

Sure enough, here he comes,
on the down-run:
(Is that her gun?)

As if a kind of logic says
that up must have its down
That what is joined together
must be wrenched asunder

I’d have them pass with secret
smiles meant only for each other

Blue Baby

A healthy blue, granted,
but the associations were there.

I mean the face of the child she painted
at the head of the stairs

like nothing else in a town
full of likeness.
Barring that, normal–
for a painter of blue babies.

They taught art to children,
none their own

Consolations

we swim in failure
and a weak grasp of the infinite

the last good job poisoned
by envy and strewn tacks

a kind of fractured ease
in this sinking

you think of where
you’d rather be

Nothing.

those were
the years of atomic submarines
otherwise pleasant

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David Ackley lives and writes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including The Miscreant. His story, “Natural History,” can be found in the winter 2015 issue of Per Contra. His flash fiction, ” Zaire,” won an Editor’s Favorite Award for 2015 from Camroc Press Review.