Paul Dickey


“Does the Name of an Erle Stanley Gardner Mean 
Anything to You?”

I think the rainbow is lying. When I
press for details, he quotes some scriptures
which sounds like "O ye of little faith."
There was no one else. Not now, now ever.”

I do want to believe him, but I am afraid
to ask too many questions. The courtroom log
will read like the confessional script.
He will spill everything about our desolate

moon, the exact chemical content of stars, 
the whole sad story which we don't want
to hear anymore. So my judgment is that 
he is lying, but I shall not ask him

that last question. He might defy
public decency and bring the trial
to the tearful display the scripture 
promised.  Dear, now he is your witness.



Best Friend 

These flakes fall like any other,
tasteless as a soul. Now they lie
like microscopic, crushed bones.
They melt before the land will forgive. 
I for one am going to miss you.

This night before your departure, I watch
today’s sun at the last minute of color.
You are on the neighbor’s porch. Their lights
flash on to greet you and the sunset
follows you through the foreign household.

Paul Dickey won the 2015 Master Poet award from the Nebraska Arts Council. His first full length poetry manuscript, They Say This is How Death Came Into the World, was published by Mayapple Press in January, 2011. His poetry and flash have appeared in Verse Daily, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Southern Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Pleaides, 32Poems, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other online and print publications. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace was published by Pinyon Publishing in October, 2013.

More info is available at the author's new website: https://pauldickey9.wix.com/paul-dickey.

 
 

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