Truce
Night’s set itself down
and won’t move on.
All the boots
are lined up at the door.
The porchlight’s on.
The father’s home late,
picking his way
through the fallen heroes
on the rug. The dishes
are abandoned by the sink.
One child, one mother
collapsed in two beds,
the war over and night,
as before, taking up
the whole of the sky.
*
B. Lynne Zika’s prose, photography, and verse appear regularly in online and print journals. 2024 publications include Medusa’s Kitchen, Lyrical Somerville, and The Crossroads. Previous years include Gargoyle Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, Medusa’s Kitchen, The Crossroads, Delta Poetry Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She is the author of The Strange Case of Eddy Whitfield, The Longing, and Letters to Sappho: Putting Out the Fire. In addition to editing poetry and nonfiction, she worked as a closed-captioning editor for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Awards include: Pacificus Foundation Literary Award in short fiction, Little Sister Award and Moon Prize in poetry, and Viewbug Top Creator and Hero Awards in photography.
Lovely, Lynne