Robert Knox
Robert Knox is a poet, fiction writer, and Boston Globe correspondent. As a contributing editor for the online poetry journal, Verse-Virtual, his poems appear regularly on that site. They have also appeared in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, New Verse News, The Eunoia Review, and others. His poetry chapbook Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty was nominated for a Massachusetts Best Book award. He was the winner of the 2019 Anita McAndrews Poetry Award. His book of linked short stories, House Stories, was published in 2021. Robert recommends Jewish Voice for Peace.
Time was taking a piece of him,
Piece by piece he would disappear
Not made of anything permanently enduring
What once was most alluring
Vanishes to dust
the king's fool
elevated beyond his pay grade by a glitch
in a system 200 years out of date,
no anti-virus protection in sight
She unlocks it, enters the room, and after soothing the woman by telling her that she has been sent by her husband, leans to whisper her true identity in the woman's ear and shoots her in the temple. One bullet, execution style.
“Pull a few of your buddies out of the drink with a fish gaff, and the gung-ho stuff is never the same... Smell the beaches the day after a landing,” he added, his speech slow, seemingly labored, “before the burial details go to work.”
Erase the stars from the velvet sky
Roll down the mountains, one by one.
Say goodbye to animal glamour
Soon we follow,
painted ponies on the vaulted carousel
