:: ShatterColors Literary Review

Gloucester

by David W. Landrum

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us:
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes.

----King Lear

She was a little hell-cat to be sure.
She purred and curled her tail and was as lithe
as any feline. That young wench’s lure,
hot as a lightning storm, cost me my eyes.

What came out nine months later was a boy.
I named him Edmund, “protector of wealth,”
never imagining he would destroy
my greatest gold, my vision, by his stealth.

I got him in a dark and vicious place.
Yet I recall his mother—wayward slave,
so generous to serve me pleasure’s grace,
so wild and sweet in all the fucks she gave—

I can’t help thinking of this costly sin . . .
and how gladly I’d do it all again.

About the Author

David W. Landrum is Professor of Humanities at Cornerstone University in Western Michigan . His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including The Formalist, The New Formalist, The Barefoot Muse, Web Del Sol, and many others. His articles and fiction have appeared in Twentieth-Century Literature, Philological Quarterly, Amarillo Bay, Loch Raven Review. His chapbook, Identities, is available at: http://www.formalpoetry.com/ ebooks/landrum.html.

He is also the editor of a new online journal, Lucid Rhythms.

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