Nick Kolakowski

WORLD'S ROCKY RIM

The Devil jammed a finger in Old Bill’s eye,
Made him twitch and froth as we watched,
Resigned to a hard Fall, ice bearding the eaves,
The road outside a river of frosty mud,
Hungry for boots; we curled upon ourselves,
In the cold, around the hard kernels of the pasts
That had flung us here, onto the world’s rocky rim,
Battered by a midnight sea.
The only difference between you and me,
Is I turned left at the stop sign, pressed the gas
A little too hard, maybe—just two seconds
Is what separates your morality and mine.
The sun broke like a dim bulb through cotton
Old Bill calmed and drooled; we fixed dinner.
Christmas approached; ingenious ideas sprung to mind.


Nick reads "World's Rocky Rim":



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Nick confesses: "What’s the half-life of guilt? It depends on who’s bearing that guilt, of course. With this poem, I wanted to create an environment that externalized a character’s feelings of culpability over something horrible that happened a long time in the past. But even at rock bottom, I wanted to give a little glimmer of hope."

NICK KOLAKOWSKI is the author of the noir thrillers Boise Longpig Hunting Club and A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps. His work has appeared in Thuglit, Crime Syndicate Magazine, Plots with Guns, and various anthologies. He lives and writes in New York City.