The Farm
By John C. Mannone

The horizon—a long thin island, washed with waves
of wheat. Barn and silo—a lighthouse silhouette
on amber sun, sinking. Night-green tractor, anchored,

exhausted. Final splash of dust catching glints,
transforms—star twinkles in faded sky—afterglow
from a billion suns whispered to the soft night.

~

The soft bituminous night. Now hardened
by embers clinked in fire-glow, steam to carbonize air.
Once wood, now coal, stoked in basement stoves.

Stoves whose iron hooves
corral the cream-white bins mottled black—
like a herd of Holsteins feeding the hungry night:

squeezed for every drop of light, and poured into pails
of concrete, glass, and steel, yet carelessly sloshed out,
washing the grass gray. Spilling skies with milk.

BIO: John C. Mannone has been nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize in Poetry and for the 2010 Rhysling Poetry Award. He is the poetry editor of Silver Blade. His poetry and short fiction appear in numerous literary and speculative fiction journals such as Skive, Pirene's Fountain, Abyss & Apex, Paper Crow, Aethlon, Lobster Cult, Eclectic Flash, The Legendary, Liquid Imagination, and Astropoetica. Many of his poems introduce anthologies with publishers such as Aurora Wolf, Static Movement, Lady Luck Publishing and Residential Aliens. He loves to teach and serves on the poetry faculty of To Write Well. John is a nuclear consultant and a professor of physics in beautiful east Tennessee. When he isn't looking at the stars, he's creating dishes in the kitchen, which he considers another form of poetry. His blog is at jcmannone.wordpress.com.

The Farm By John C. Mannone

The Farm
By John C. Mannone