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

A few miles
From Bucksnort, Tennessee

Next to a Shell Station
A large blackbird
Has built a nest

Inside the word  SNACK
Straw   Feathers   Paper   Hair
Inserted beak-carefully
Within the bright yellow A

I love the Roman Alphabet
Might give my life for it some day
Travelling from one silence
As I do    To another    Blessed to use it
To pull a flight plan from this bright empty air

By John McKernan

John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska – is now a retired comma herder after teaching forty-one years at Marshall University. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. He writes because he is addicted to words which present emotion as reality His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field and many other magazines. His e-mail address: