Stephen Jackson The Old Neighborhood

The Old Neighborhood

There are pockets left, I may turn a corner to find the stage set

fully intact, the actors, or should I say players, have all exited, gone—

since the dozers came to disassemble the stages where once we pined

—still, a line will come, long since stuck at the back of my mind,

then I hear laughter gather in the rustle of leaves, dappled sun

like stage lights upon memories of when we’d sit outside hip cafés,

acting like our days or lives might go on forever, never expecting

the twist near the end —the convoluted plot that returns me now

to these lots, finds me strutting—then fretting, an audience of one.

Stephen Jackson

Stephen Jackson lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Other work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Hole in the Head Review, and others.