Poetry by W. Joey Thornton

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Winter Visit

He welcomes me into his home. Tells me to call him by his first name. It is warm and honey yellow. In the kitchen he serves us darkly rich Middle-eastern tea brewed with mushrooms. I drink it. I become an amateur mycologist. The room brightens. Sky blue and heather. We talk of poets and vegetarians. He tells me they’re both hard lifestyles to live authentically. 

Around his formica topped kitchen table, we share thinly sliced deer’s heart. Sharp iron and knives. In the street a storm scratches the air. Cataract vision leaves the streetlights hanging disembodied in the night’s sky. He shoots a gun wildly into the darkness. Laughter. 

I ask him to write a brief eulogy for the deer, but his voice is silenced by the aluminum shards of the snow.

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W. Joey Thornton has undergraduate and master's degrees in Music: Vocal Performance from Central Washington University. His current writing interests touch on health, disability, horror, aging, the bleak and beautiful. His work has appeared in Central Washington University's Manastash Literary Journal.
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