Because

For Yannis Ritsos

Because the watcher wrote red on the shop’s wall,
because the half-candle was stolen & sold
for fuel,
because the innocent got hit with a cold,
wet branch,
because the town is divided by a line of blood
in the sand,
because the drug you bought was dropped
in the ditch,
because the sky is burnished with orange
not unlike a lockman’s smile,
because this rusty box houses a severed finger
from an unknown hand,
because the woman you saw walking in the market
carried a purse made of flies,
because the dead haunt your days with fish-scale
chains rattling on the road
for this, only for this reason I lied to you.

Charles Kell is a PhD student at The University of Rhode Island and editor of The Ocean State Review. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, IthacaLit, The Pinch, and elsewhere. He teaches in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Featured image: Underground Larakin by Darkdays photographer at flickr. CC license.