BD Feil is a writer who has lived around the Great Lakes all his life. Cleveland, Chicago, Michigan, now northwest Ohio. His stories and poems have been published in Mississippi Review, Slice Magazine, Poet Lore, Craft Literary, Forge Literary, The Literateur, The Linnet’s Wings, Mulberry Fork Review, New Haven Review, New Plains Review, Summerset Review, and many other places. A collection of poetry, Lifting Myself By My Own Toes, appeared in 2021.

Dark City

It would like to hold us here
its welcoming streets and alleys
its familiar neighborhoods

an outside not outside at all with
brick pavers pouring up its walls
like so much warm wainscoting

shadowed squares where pictures
we never knew once hung bathed
in sunlight during brighter days

it would like to keep us here and
feed us by hand piece by piece
as we sleep and maybe it does

Paleo

She lifted him from her arm
to her back the way she did
time and again and he held fast
the way he did though he was
little older than a babe held fast
to her neck and her hair and she
began wading across the fen
her balance sure
even with her young one
now clinging to her back

years later she long gone
and he wandering so much
just assuming each place new
he came to a fen and something
struck of a sudden like a sharp
taste or final note of a bird’s
song and it was memory but he had
no word for it no concept
and he was confused and
a chill shook through him

The Power

Once I saw standing at a window
of a house long empty
a woman who could only be dead
and I told myself well
you looked too long
if you look too long
sooner or later the dead will appear
it might be a power you have
though how this power could
benefit mankind I didn’t know
I don’t use it anymore
I pass on quickly
eyes down humming a tune