by Joe Engel After the bathroom, I sat in my chair, the one passed down by my brother; a tan corduroy armchair, peppered with cigarette burns, that was the closest thing I had to a feeling of home.  I watched a line of ants march in order, single file from the baseboard, towards what looked…

by Joe Engel I listened to Matt as I stared through my own reflection in the window.  Everything was in a dark autumn glow.  The lounge was lit by wall mounted lamps and candles in the kind of oblong holders you might find at a pizza parlor.  My rust colored beer was getting warm and…

by Joe Engel Here is a poem that was first published in “Other Poetry”, an English poetry journal, about a decade ago. I wrote it at about that same time. It came about from late night runs to 24 hour grocery stores. It was a great time to shop. There were no lines, there was…

by Joe Engel The bulldozer beeps as it backs up, warning us. Some repairs take days, some take years, that car on cinder blocks slowly turning to rust. It seems this renovation is going nowhere. In winter, construction stops and I am left with familiar floaters in my eyes like seeing my brain cells  swimming…

By Joe Engel There is ice on the blacktop where I turn right into an old friend’s neighborhood. The road crunches.  My memory slips. I don’t remember this road in winter. The dimensions are off but the ravine  where we played war  among the Elephant’s Ear is there, and the train tracks remain a way…

by Joe Engel My mom released the mail to the kitchen table as if it blew there. “All junk,” she said and asked us to help with the trunk load of groceries.  My friend had just prodded me enough that I pinned him to the carpet before I hopped up and passed  through the kitchen…

by Joe Engel I rub the refurbished chair I sit on for spirit. My cell phone sleeps. Across the room a woman’s story unwinds  like witnessing a flood  breech the foundation  of someone else’s home. But there is a crow on my shoulder- the crow I ignore. My ear is just carrion. Some nights my…

By Joe Engel The road crew is knee deep in a mirage. Silvery waves rise from the heat they can’t see, heat which raises sweat from their skin and causes them to draw frequently from the ice water in their thermoses, whose saintly clanking seems to descend from somewhere other than these miles of assigned…

by Joe Engel It was July 4th, and Lisa leaned against the fuel door of Jim’s Chevy Nova. It was stalled on the shoulder of highway H.  She stared down the flow of traffic, but didn’t wave them over.  They swerved wide as they passed.  It was a dry summer.  The hot wind pushed her…

by Joe Engel East St. Louis appeared in the first left turn after taking the wrong exit on the interstate, it’s impression formed in the old tube TV’s on plastic crates outside of a pawn shop. A house across from that sat in a pile of its own wooden remains where it had collapsed, not…