Bluefish

       Its carcass and half its head
       had been gobbled by the gulls
       when I stumbled upon it,

<       bagging clusters of rose-
       colored barnacles washed up
       on the beach at high tide.

       Its glaucous eye, partially
       crusted with sand, stared through
       instead of at me, as if

       freshly returned from a journey
       beyond the fathomless blues
       of death: an eye so saturate

       with sight even the scavenging
       gulls spared it, their stomachs
       churning with the eye, devoured.

Thrift Shop

       An hour ago, looming
       with its cold, cobalt awnings

       shortly after sunrise, deserted,
       it was a storefront Hopper

       would’ve sketched to resurrect
       later in the light-drenched

       tedium of his art. Now, ambient
       with the rubicund ebullience

       of a Renoir, it bustles with well-heeled
       matrons doing penance, ringing sales

       for charity, shoeing the needy
       with bargain-counter buys of greed.

Larry D. Thomas has published several award-winning collections of poetry, including As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, which received a 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards Finalist citation. He lives in the high Chihuahuan Desert of Far West Texas with his wife and two long-haired Chihuahuas. WEB
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