The Banyan Review: Wade Fox

Bio: 
Wade Fox lives in Denver and teaches writing at the Community College of Denver. He is the founder of New Feathers Anthology, an online and print literary and art journal. A writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he has published poems in North Dakota Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Cabildo Quarterly, Datura Journal, Occam’s Razor, Littoral, and R.K.V.R.Y, and short stories in Occam’s Razor, The Corner Club, and Minimus. He has also written book reviews and cowrote a chapter in the book Blues: Philosophy for Everyone. As an editor, he has edited many authors, including, notably, George Harrison, JK Rowling, and Kamala Harris.

Rivers Are No Longer Poetic

A philosopher once said, “The rivers are no longer poetic.”
Dammed and domesticated, channeled and drained, the Colorado dead before reaching the ocean, 
the Mississippi slithering, filled with silt. Measured and metered from satellite images, rivers cut square as circuits, running in concrete channels, chainedto man’s desire; yet, 
is this true? Aren’t our lives rivers, coolly rolling from source to sea, trees and hills sliding by on the banks? Don’t the serpentinetwists still surprise?
Can we lower ourbodies into the dark water and let go, drifting, 
as the future drifts into the past with a steady, leisurely progression, letting the waters wash over our bodies, rinsing away the detritus of pain,of regret? 
The river may still be,though difficult to see, itself, the power pushing behind life, theeverlasting movement, tug that pulls us, until we sink beneath dark waters. Perhaps
when wesleep, we dream, the waters roll on and only philosophers no longer feel the river’s pull.

Streetlight Bardo

awaiting the birth of                perfectionfrom                the broken
struggling to remember               forgotten    keys    phone numbers    homes                                                dreams     faces     lovers
on a frozen side-walk beside                an empty                                 kiosk
                immobileeyes moving 		   side to side 
                 wind blowsthrough                 the street
in darknesssightless                 souls flutter
                 dried leavesscraping ondead branches
                 the                  slow   turning                                    of time                               grinds away                                                                      appearance
                   waiting in the liminaldark for a bus ride to heaven

Wade Fox

Rivers Are No Longer Poetic

Streetlight Bardo

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