Liam C. Calhoun is a history teacher in the borderlands of Texas. Meeting home after a quasi-long career of wanderings, mishaps and wanderings more, he spends nearly every moment he can squeeze recounting his ventures abroad and accounts inside. His recent poems have appeared in A Brilliant Record, Down in the Dirt, The Stray Branch and the collection books 100 Words, After Apocalypse, Bleeding Heart Cadaver, Don’t Forget It, Falling, Literary Town Hall and Purpose.
_______________
Bacon, Breathe and Benevolent
She paves the path
Of dynasties carved
With buckets of sludge upon back;
Bent, not unlike her mother’s limb,
But under shinier red flags,
Cloth coated, with lesser blood.
She’d had a hint of gray
She’d not had last time
She had a newer limp
She’d not had last time,
Her bosom furthered from firm,
Reaching for the ground, a promise,
In years to be wed with,
And yet the underneath
Of it all remained as radiant
As any sun’d ever been;
And come the cloudy day she leaves,
Even mine own eye
Will remain far from dry.
I’d remember freshly cured bacon,
And her tender chopsticks offering life;
She’d saved me once, she’d save me again.
To read more from Liam pick up a copy of the current issue here