Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 36
Spring Equinox, 2020

Featured artwork, Broken Tulip, by Andrew Davis.

New Works

Peter Wood


Funeral for a dreamer

We were gliding down hills near the mountains, an urban passageway to a forgotten shadow. My arms free out the window while I observed the brevity of bipeds. Five thousand miles from my burial plot in a cemetery by a train track. Tranquility overcame me when wondering what if it ended here, beneath blue skies and endless sprawl. Or any foreign host, for that matter. Could I be buried in Rome between ignoble soldiers? Or in granite aside the chiseled Chilean coast? Maybe I'll be stuffed beneath silt in Alberta, perfumed with skunk sweat and easily forgotten. In unwritten fables in unbuilt libraries a mausoleum hoists my remains toward the heavens. This is why climbing uphill is better, since you focus on your footing.


Tunneled into prances

I was running even though there's nowhere to go. Things felt slow and then slower, like a hamster probably dreams. It was nice, albeit pretty unnerving, to seek a light so faint. Maybe a flood had washed it out, or perhaps the ire of injustice blew it down with flat winds. Every once in a while someone tries to jog with me. They struggle to keep up and eventually change shoes, their hope extinguished just like Old Yeller. Easter is still right around the corner and I chase it down despite not caring for ham or pastels. Faded gray is fine with me, I joke to an audience of three. When the hummingbird realizes I have no seeds she too hustles away. On the wall, just like yesterday and tomorrow, a plaque reminds me of how tired I was. So naturally I sit down and wait for a bowl of pale orange sherbet.


Peter Wood is a researcher currently based in Washington, DC. He has recent or forthcoming work in Magma Poetry, Nightingale & Sparrow and Toasted Cheese Literary Journal. One of his favorite colors is yellow.