Leather Gloves
It’s a curious flavor of darkness in the woods the kind you might expect to find in the smoky heart of a dying fire a car is moving slowly under the arcing branches of old oaks and hickories as if the driver is watching for something he is quiet his body seemingly awkward in its posture an unusual stiffness is rippling from his shoulders he drank a cup of Lapsang Souchong before leaving home and the smoke from his breath still baffles his eyes there used to be CDs on the passenger seat even though he never listens to music he always fills the gas tank once it’s half empty in his memory there were passages beneath his childhood home where his mother used to rendezvous with a man in leather gloves they always reappeared after an hour or two always dressed for rain always running down the springs on an imaginary clock he imagines the man as his passenger buckled tightly in as they approach a tunnel on both sides the steep walls of his mother’s thighs he remembers his father sleeping quietly on a bare mattress on the kitchen floor in the days before their house burned down.
Paul Ilechko is a Pushcart nominated poet who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Night Heron Barks, Tampa Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Sleet Magazine, and The Inflectionist Review. His first album, “Meeting Points”, was released in 2021.
South Broadway Ghost Society 