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Robert S. King
Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2021
Social Distancing
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Robert S. King
Much more than six feet away, a neighbor cleans his gutters. At a safe distance, another watches through the face shield of her window.
I dare outside toward the empty street to fetch spam mail and bills from my box, leaving my housebound computer wheezing as it tries to disinfect a virus.
Even electronics get infected, but today the gutterman’s faith tests positive as he whistles while he works.
Across this vast space, the man on wobbling ladder spots my courageous voyage and tears off his mask so that from a distant world he can at least yell hello.
Rising Wind
Robert S. King
— In memoriam, poet Joan Colby, 2020
Wind takes your last breath higher than the weight of the world, lifts your voice that we still hear flowing around the earth. You will sing to us forever who sing along in every breath we take.
Robert S. King lives in Athens, Georgia, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press and edits Good Works Review. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press 2014), Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014), and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020). His personal website is www.robertsking.info.
