Front Porch Review
A literary magazine for the young at heart and mind

I am a prisoner in the jungle of regret,
a place of bold ferns
and slick tongues that flick
toward the blood's heat. Here

I beheld the man who ate his children.
Behind the sound of water,
in an oasis of gardenias,
he is caged.

I paid ten dollars.
He looked like me.
He was thought to have taken on wisdom
with his crime. I had prepared weighty riddles:

how do spores differ from seeds and why
am I shaped like the letter Y?
A roar escaped him

like a yawn. So, I said, what about
the children? He dropped to all fours
and regarded me
through the ribcage of bars.

                     They begged me to, he said.
                     Their little eyes cried for it.
                     I ate the first bleat from the womb,
                     then the fevers, the night terrors,
                     the cruelty of friends, homesickness,
                     inappropriate loves - kept it all down
                     and licked my lips.                               

Within this jungle I have let myself
be bound by flowered ropes that would crumble
in my hands, and blinded by wings
that flutter sunset reds and golds

across my senses.
I breathe in their fragile colors
and ask, politely, if the cage
is big enough for two.

By David Hart

David Hart was born and raised, more or less, in Galesburg, Illinois, a small town and birthplace of another poet, Carl Sandberg, who was heartily detested by those locals who knew him. The main diversions in Galesburg were dating, beer and golf. David didn't play golf, but he did manage to read a couple of books before he left for college. He majored in English at Northwestern with the hope of being a writer ─ fame, women, wine and long hair ─ but decided he could make a better living at something less reputable. He attended Harvard Law School, practiced in Chicago for about thirty years, retired early, lost his hair, and is dependent upon his wife for support in his dotage.