Shuffleboard

The vantages are riddled with punctures over years
and the sight, the years, and the holes have made
a mooring in his clothes, are no longer his,
or belong to anyone else.

He holds his breath, works, falls out of love or eats
out of its hand, and wonders, then worries a thumbnail
over the flesh edge of his long collected, aging gashes.

The era floods, droughts, and floods again and the man
is hurtled past in the speed of it like a dog's carcass
down the shuffleboard.

Everything else fights dust. They salt the run
to keep it off.

So the howling of baboons wake him, send him out.


—Ray Succre


Ray Succre lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Laika, and Rock Salt Plum, as well as numerous other outlets across as many countries. He tries hard.