Douglas Richardson lives in Santa Ana, California, with his wife Jen and cat Wes. His poetry has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Black Poppy Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Ekphrastic Review, Hobo Camp Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Medusa’s Kitchen, The Nervous Breakdown, The New Verse News, The Rye Whiskey Review, Straight Forward Poetry, Trouvaille Review, Poetry Super Highway, and others. In 2013, he won the Poetry Super Highway contest with “Notes from the Graveyard Shift.”

Bennington’s Travels

1.
Quick with a quip
and a winning smile
a race of psychopaths
rules the world
while Bennington
finds hope
in plants
illuminated in office buildings
on full moon evenings
he lovingly waters them
in his mind
twelve stories below

2.
Bennington remembers a time
when music was good
songs that enriched his life but
worsened his disposition

3.
Since he was young
Bennington has heard
and believed
that life is short
but everything
done and not done
hums in perpetuity
throughout the cosmos

4.
In daylight hours
Bennington’s shadow
warps, bends
reminds him of his gravity
his earthen melancholy
he is accompanied and
heading home
5.
Bennington travels west
to Seven Palms
where angels alight
then turns north
into northern light
sky no longer sky
flight no longer flight
convincing himself
that everything’s all right

June Bug

Labored flight
short life
bounced off my screen door
fell heavy to the concrete floor
stumbled an inch or two
I took modest measures
to help it be
slid a notecard underneath
then set it in the grass outside
I’d like to say now I’m a man
never again a callous boy
but this would be of dubious veracity
though true I eased our suffering