Ken Poyner

Importance

Ken Poyner

A woman has climbed over The rickety fire escape outside A building’s sixth floor window.

People begin to gather at the base Of the building. It is assumed She has some connection to the sixth floor

Window. Perhaps it leads to An apartment. Perhaps it is an office Where she works, clerical or cleaning,

Or with numbers. Her heels On the ledge of the fire escape platform, She reaches back to the rail,

Cupping it underhand and leaning In a series of acute angles forward. Below, the debate is will she fall

Or jump, or will someone at the window Step out to gather her heroically by the waist. A woman with her pre-teen son

Collects at the back of the still growing Crowd. She draws her hand over Her son’s eyes, as the woman is naked.

Ken Poyner lives in Norfolk, Virginia. This year he has published several pieces of microfiction and between twenty and thirty poems, three of which have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.