John Swain lives in Louisville KY. His work has appeared recently at BluePrint Review, Red Fez, and Up the Staircase Quarterly.

A Chance Will Tell
By John Swain

Lace of white sycamores
stripped in passage
as rain took rust off nails
that boarded the old house
from staying
as the river rose to the hill
in a bliss of turbulence.
The stacks and tower held blue fire
like an acrid sky
of vertical water
as I then twisted my limbs
to let down
from the wooden fencing
where a chance will tell.
I looked to the abandoned
for the secret of escape.