Hot
Air Balloon
The sun rose. The garbage truck
emptied the dumpster.
So many skeletons clacked
as they dropped into its gut.
One climbed out and scaled
the truck's grimy frame.
She looked to the sun
and covered her eye sockets.
She sprinted towards me
and stopped at my feet.
Her eyes looked like hot air
balloons ascending.
They seemed to be made
from the substance of dreams.
She tilted her head and caressed
her finger along my jaw bone.
I was in a hot air balloon
following the garbage truck.
The sun sets. I am slowly emptied.
Tom Holmes currently lives in Mississippi. He is the founding
editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and the author of five
full-length collections of poetry, most recently The Cave (The Bitter Oleander
Press, 2014), which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry
Book Award for 2013, as well as of four chapbooks. His new collection, The
Book of Incurable Dreams, is forthcoming from Xavier Review Press.