Bullet Hole, 1994

[ICSoria]

Phil,
I love this read. Nicely done.
There is a natural metric flow within the first lines, capturing the reader and helping draw him/her into the narrative's deeper recesses. A slight tightening by elimination of extraneous words such as “the” or “and” could increase its effectiveness. Some of my suggestion below...feel free to take or reject as you will. It is a great read either way and I thank you for posting.

Sid

After the echo and the arrest, the reporters,
the open gate in[to] the backyard,
we went to see the damage.

When my father stopped me
from going any further,
I was busy thinking of coal,
the brittle rock
that turns men into mines
with claps of dust.
I thought there was a piece of it
in the wall.

That week, it followed
my eyes through windows,
staring into the hallway from outside.

Once, when no one was home,
I went to touch it,
only to find a

hole

bewitchingly black.
The emptiness
I explored like a flashlight
aimed at the sky,

let the darkness
limp over my finger
as ash

and by the time the house awoke
my burial had left me cold
to the nail.

I was a miner
carving life
out of stone;

digging for shells
with the voices of tides,
holding them to my ear

wishing they would not
tell me of their birth
and how close I was
to death.