David Nelson Bradsher Poems

You might disown my bitter tone
and lump me in with crazy men,
but when I think and speak in ink
you'll have to kill my tilted pen
...

She rises painfully—without complaint—
haloed by silver-white in feathered hair,
and she assists her husband from his chair,
dragging her shadow like a burdened saint.
...

The suits are girded, rallying the troops
with power-point displays at Monday’s meeting,
explaining how a five-year fiscal “oops”
resulted in last week’s employee bleeding.
...

The dust of day's detritus grays the room
as if the ashes of Pompeii
have blurred the atmosphere and smudged the gloom,
grinding the light away.
...

A Year of Sundays

As if a breathing god,
the night exhales a glaze
...

A smudge of a man,
he trudged the blur between
a can-do attitude,
a cruel demeanor,
...

With spite,5: 30 in the morning came,
alarmed, and jarring to his drowsy senses,
bringing to bear the morning-force of blame
that punched and powered through internal fences
...

They walked the dark to dawn,
beneath a moon the hue of butter-crème,
traversing lawn to selfsame lawn,
their breaths cocooned in steam
...

I drive up Ashe, past rows of shotgun shacks
that were erected thirty years ago
as subsidized apartments for the poor;
but now the rich want condos down to Snow,
...

Her vodka-laced pronouncements stung
my eyes with breath of Russian fire—
...