by Kevin Risner

should I sit down
with a block
of tarot cards     you flip
each one right side
up     you go
further down the line
to the image you’re thirsting
for     raise it for all to see
the future you have dreamt about
I dreamt about so many
harrowing things     this past month
I was walking     and fainting
the diagnosis was forgotten    and I
woke up in a cold sweat    maybe it
was someone else    diagnosed
catching it like     a pitch
in baseball    summer as distant as Mars
seems to be each midnight    clear as day    past
the whirring avenues of my brain    muffled
from the wind    the protector    the next
card    waiting in the wings for the bitter
cold mornings    where the pipes clang    without
warning we jump    even though
we know it’s going to happen.
&

Kevin A. Risner 

Kevin A. Risner is writing instructor and ESL Coordinator at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His work can be found (or will be) online in many journals: most recently The Bookends Review, Last Exit, Indicia, 8 Poems, and Riggwelter. He has two short poetry collections published: My Ear is a Sieve (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and Lucid (The Poetry Annals, 2018).

Artist: Unknown