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Avalon
  • Home
  • Spring 2026
    • Poetry
      • A Hearty Meal for Mr. Tempus
      • Bird Watching North of the Bathroom
      • Conversation of Impossibility
      • Decay
      • Green Bananas
      • ThAI Will Be Done
      • The Doctor Says It'll Pass Given Time
      • The Sick Mother
    • Fiction
      • Carapace
      • Kin
      • Sand Dune Euology
      • Re-Fired Love
      • The Kitchen
    • Visual Art
      • Atomic
      • Early morning train ride
      • Family Meeting
      • George
      • I am without my boots
    • Contributors
  • Past Issues
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        • The Sick Mother
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 Spring 2023     Poetry 

Answers

Joshua Lewis

I never pretend to have the answers
So why should they?
People in charge who infringe and barge
Into headspaces in which they don’t belong

Often times they are lost or at a loss
Thoughts and prayers to fill the void
A cacophony of catastrophic events kill
The cost of character and kindred care is free

Instead we get “free thinkers”
Non-blinkers, eye-winkers
The rhetoric speaks doubly more volumes than, well, them
Baseless, empty, but they’ll run home saying anything

These people are scary
THESE PEOPLE ARE DANGEROUS
Not the “Aaahh!!! Real Monsters” type
But more the “he won’t be staying for dinner” type

These people, well, pretend like they aren’t
Some think they’re God, others play martyr
Incendiaries on a screen for folks to burst into flames
They’ll make sure to collect their cuts in a couple weeks

This isn’t fair, no matter how many times they tell us life isn’t
Their plans don’t bother to include the underrepresented
The broken, the inflicted, the grieving
“Free speech”, but WE pay the price
Because people believe them
Enabled, “empowered” by them
Showered with what to think, what to do, how to move
And even with no questions asked, they still, have answers

A Letter to my Parents

A Life of Fiction

Answers

Black Spirit

Giving In

I have a question!

I think of you

Light's Secret

Murky Middle

Once Upon a Push Pin Heart

Origami Horses

Road Trip

Shadow's Descent

She Gets to Live

Shenandoah Spring

Silver Linings

Something Within

spinning

SU

supernova

The Epitaph of Stolen Words

The Nightmare's Lullaby

The Society of Lost Fathers

To Be

Young Black Bunny

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