Light Ranger

By L.S. KLATT

I would kill for the feeling of television. 
I felt it once. I felt it holster light. 

I felt it clutch me in the dark and treble 
my house. All the houses. I felt the firefight

on television, the car chase, the crime
and punishment. I got caught up 

in prisms, then smashed them, high on
perfume, dirty picture. Television was

blasphemy to me; it was Satan, god-
like. I wanted something heart-shaped 

I hadn’t had the pleasure of. My good eye glinted
languidly in a heaven without people.

 

[Purchase Issue 21 here.]

 

L.S. Klatt’s poetry has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Daily, The Believer, The Best American Poetry, Image, The Southern Review, New American Writing, Copper Nickel, and Crazyhorse. He is the author of four collections, most recently a volume of prose poems entitled The Wilderness After Which. His essay “Blue Buzz, Blue Guitar: Wallace Stevens and the Poetics of Noisemaking” was published by The Georgia Review in 2019.

 

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Light Ranger

Related Posts

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.

Two Poems by Hendri Yulius Wijaya

HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
time and again his math teacher grounded him in the courtyard to lower / the level of his sissyness. the head sister chanted his name in prayer to thwart // him from playing too frequently with girl classmates. long before he’s enamored with the word / feminist