Chris O’Carroll

BIO

Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor. His poems have appeared in Angle, First Things, Free Inquiry, Light, and The Rotary Dial, among other print and online journals, and in the anthologies The Best of the Barefoot Muse and 20 Years at the Cantab Lounge.

Top of the First

I will fling so fast, so crafty
That your strongest swing must fail.
The blow I wield, precise and mighty,
Lets no throw of yours prevail.

Before the straining runner’s gait,
The grass-stained dive, the dust-cloud slide,
Our stances here define the contest –
Wit vs. strength on either side.

Flight Path

Yesterday, you smeared your blood across
The pane and dropped, neck broken, to the grass.
I plastic bagged your feathered corpse to toss
It in the trash. I spritzed and wiped the glass.
The clean-up chore was small. Likewise the loss?

Another robin hopping on the lawn
This morning hardly seems to be aware,
Much less to feel unsettled, that you’re gone.
He’s not the one who put the window there.

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