5th Street After art history, the widow drove me to my slum studio. Its only north-facing window overlooked the vacant lot where I saw a shootout my first night there. Barely 30, they hadn’t suspected her husband’s bad heart. Dying, he had betrayed their now backward-pointing future. We hung there, our hollow faces reflecting the…
Category: Fiction
Stories and poems by Thomas Hudson
Bio, Fiction
Poem: The Thing She Said to Me
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The Thing She Said to Me The poets and rockers didn’t go beyond Avenue A, where the poverty was unromantic. My fifth-floor walk-up (Ave. C and 9th) looked over the rooftops of Manhattan, to the sea beyond. Floating above the world, the carnival-lit World Trade Center tethered me every night. Around the corner, the heartless barmaid…
Fiction
Poem: For Penny
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With the broken-hearted language of the abandoned,
the orphan spoke into the rising smoke
above the campfire.
Her voice carried through the smoke and sparks
into the night beyond
where everything is sky.
The spirits conjured there
were kind and full of yearning,
like her.
Every word was clear.
Across these many years I remember them still.
“We all find love, right, Tommy?”
The hard laughter of the others
choked the answer in my throat.
In the silence
the night grew chill
and stole her away.
“Yes, Penny.”