Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.  

Terror in town

  They recall clouds of a dense earth
 snaking through the vales at high noon
 and stopped in awe at the puzzling rage.
 
 Behind the peeling wheel of that eerie race horse
 resolved to another aimless journey
 she bore a well-known frown as fixture.
 
 When her kin sat in repose near wooden clogs
 in ancient harmony as they contemplated the flight of the swallows
 misunderstood this devil sped through the meadow
 
 Chased by a taunting record of desolate tales
 she never slowed to engage in a future
 as the rust riddled carriage vanished in a sunless finale.
 
 It was a little too early perhaps for a new sunrise
 as she fitted the noose so tight
 and vanished from memories as if she never was.

Making Another Earth

 Thinking herself another Da Vinci
 she gathered the precious mud
 a little ball between the juvenile palms.
  
 Upon the arid dune of ancient peaks
 she ponders the heavy flash from above
 a mirage hovering the soft crests.
  
 Her gaze above a soft shoulder
 she touches her burning skin
 brown with the sunset hours.
  
 Considering the globe within her will
 she makes a planet home of many treasures
 a tingling reaching to her deep entrails.
  
 It is a grail offered to another dusk
 the gift she will reserve for a stranger
 conqueror of unknown realms.
  
 She fashions the home to her dreams
 soft mounds upon luscious valleys
 shapes she knows well from infancy
  
 Now she may close her eyes
 at peace at on edge of final darkness
 floating on the gentle curves of her birth.  

Silent Walls

 Glacial in the dead of a brutal summer
 the room is barren as the undertaker’s.
  
 Blinding with flames of sterile light
 it seems flashes enter the broken glass.
  
 Forgotten of all those who may care
 a witness stands statuesque in the door.
  
 Not a sound dares penetrate those frigid walls
 nor a scent flavor dawns of puerile springs.
  
 A vacuum to all life empty as a hollow tomb
 it is prophesy of an irreparable future.
  
 An otherwise safe room in a grand fortress
 danger reigns there as it recalls a coming death.
  
 Surrounded by the joy of common days
 the void soon will swallow all remaining hope. 
  
 Alone the giant of the obsolete domain
 falters near the abyss of an impossible legacy.
  
 Forced to enter the inescapable destiny of oblivion
 the gate stealthily closes upon dire desperation.