Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, accomplished conga drummer/percussionist
who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area,
and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. He's published five chapbooks
and his writing has appeared in hundred of literary magazines and anthologies,
more recently in Beach Chair, The Paradox, Uppagus, Cacti Fur, Disjointed,
and many others. His selected poetry (from Androgyne Books) should be out
by the end of the year.
struck in the head
no brain no skull
no bones no blood
only the sound of wind
turning its invisible key
in door of night
the keeper the reaper
the weeper the leaper
the deeper it goes
right up to the end
an absence of color.
The way things end,
people dying before their time.
When I saw you last
could have been on the basketball court,
curly hair dribbling to the hoop.
I hadn’t consciously thought of you
until I saw the list in remembrance,
spoke to a former classmate who said
you drowned over thirty years ago
in the Yuba River.
So many years have gone since then
with no one to answer for them.
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