Dean Julius
On a Napkin at Esselon Café
- Hadley, MA
Slush on the road looks waist deep
& the neighborhood shovels snow.
A plow ambles the street somewhere—
I can hear it push aside a heavy sigh.
Piles blacken into coffee grounds.
My stepbrother told me, last night
on the phone, those with depression
see the world more clearly,
have a more accurate view
of the world. Clouds eclipsed Perseids
shower, & in the dark I couldn’t see
my own boot tracks in the driveway.
Days like today, I concede, I’m lost.
I spend more time adrift in my mind
than cars stuck in traffic on the Pike.
So I’m writing this down on a napkin,
this, a more accurate description:
We shovel, plow. Drink espresso
as quietly, as quickly as we can. I don’t
know, any more than my neighbors
watching car after car on the road.
We’re all looking for someplace to go.
Dean Julius is a Mississippi native, a middle school teacher, and the founding editor of Juke Joint Magazine. He loves food trucks and poems about animals. He received his MFA from UNC Greensboro, and his poems, reviews, and other works have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Stream, storySouth, and elsewhere.
Return to March 2019 Edition
- Hadley, MA
Slush on the road looks waist deep
& the neighborhood shovels snow.
A plow ambles the street somewhere—
I can hear it push aside a heavy sigh.
Piles blacken into coffee grounds.
My stepbrother told me, last night
on the phone, those with depression
see the world more clearly,
have a more accurate view
of the world. Clouds eclipsed Perseids
shower, & in the dark I couldn’t see
my own boot tracks in the driveway.
Days like today, I concede, I’m lost.
I spend more time adrift in my mind
than cars stuck in traffic on the Pike.
So I’m writing this down on a napkin,
this, a more accurate description:
We shovel, plow. Drink espresso
as quietly, as quickly as we can. I don’t
know, any more than my neighbors
watching car after car on the road.
We’re all looking for someplace to go.
Dean Julius is a Mississippi native, a middle school teacher, and the founding editor of Juke Joint Magazine. He loves food trucks and poems about animals. He received his MFA from UNC Greensboro, and his poems, reviews, and other works have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Stream, storySouth, and elsewhere.
Return to March 2019 Edition