C.W. Blackwell

EYES THE COLOR OF TOBACCO SMOKE

We were young when we found her
and old after that.

The three of us halfway to Arana Creek
stopped to find that old Ford
stuck in the oak tree.
Eddy Clarke swore it was by the bluff
where the ground grew steep
and periwinkles
peppered the deer trails
with lavender leaves.

Ron saw her first,
sprawled in the weeds and dirt,
beset by strange insects --
creatures heralded by that singular stench.
We wept as larvae danced
in the tender cups of her ears.

Maybe it was the girl they’d been looking for;
the one across town
whose window they found
open
in the frozen hours before dawn.

We called from Eddy’s place
and the cop asked
what was the color of her eyes?
but no one would say
for fear of seeing her face
in our minds.

Now thirty years on
I saw Ron in a waterfront bar
in the Rio Flats
and he’d grown fat
and rolled his own cigarettes
and sold car parts on the internet
to the Japanese.

The creek was high that day
and we watched as it quickened
and bled to the bay
and Ron with a hand on my shoulder
held up his cigarette and said:

Blue-gray
Blue-gray
Her eyes were the color of tobacco smoke.

We were young when we found her
and old after that.


C.W. reads "Eyes the Color of Tobacco Smoke":



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C.W. confesses: "I grew up in a neighborhood that bordered a very large forest, and my friends and I would spend hours exploring the old trails there. Once when I was eleven, I discovered the corpse of a woman who had died in an accident several days before. The poem is a combination of these memories."

C.W. BLACKWELL was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California where he still lives today. His passion is to blend poetic narratives with pulp dialogue to create strange and rhythmic genre fiction. He writes mostly crime fiction, dark fiction, and poetry. His recent work has appeared in Pulp Modern, Aphotic Realm, Econoclash Review, and Mystery Weekly Magazine.