Alec Solomita’s fiction has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, and The Drum (audio), among other publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, The Galway Review, Bold + Italic, Litbreak, Subterranean Blue Poetry, The Blue Nib, Red Dirt Forum, and elsewhere. His chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017 and is still available at Finishing Line Press and Amazon. His first full-length book of poetry was published last April by Kelsay Press. He’s working on another. He lives in Massachusetts.
The Dream
The reservoir
behind my eyes
beats,
laces through
my sinuses
stalls in my nose
skips my throat
and lodges
in my chest
aloneness
a call won’t
relieve
only a nap
and a dream
that my parents
still live
and our house
is condemned
not the dream
but the waking
grants a few seconds
deliverance
About a Cloud
One single cloud settles over my face
when I wake, like a Magritte
or Dali or another one of those
surreal sons of bitches, and man alive!
it’s full of thunder and it’s large,
dark, and still until I’ve lain
in my rumply sheets for hours and start to sing
“Can I get a witness?”
By noon it begins to break up into
streaks of cirrus see-through rags.
And around noon I roll off my sheets
and slide barefoot onto the nubby carpet,
as the cloud shreds into tatters
of white and gray. That’s when I think about
doing the dishes, but I don’t,
although I think about it.
“Man alive!” my dad would say
when he needed an exclamation.
He also used to say, “Do these few dishes,”
which is still, thirty years gone by, a family joke.
“Few” being the punchline.
By mid-afternoon, the cloud lifts
and the world is see-through blue,
but as the day ebbs into evening,
it expands once more,
fat and dark and still.
The Galway Review 