The Companion
by Douglas Cole
I am travelling along the bloodstream of this building and going down every corridor looking for the unseen terrible heart that keeps this going. I want to stab it with pens and cabinet rods until it stops and dying takes with it this rushing black sound of the void. And I am walking beside you through the spring field wet grass lush with melting ice and broken winter dew soaking your legs as you look and think you see by the green eyes and the sheen of a black coat a panther there that you follow with heart beating fast. And I am waiting here where you find the little black ink spot at the back of your awareness that you pick at and pull open rending a self you believed in in the process and feeling at that moment so much like a death but realizing that you’re just being born.
Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry and a novella. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as The Chicago Quarterly Review, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Louisiana Literature and Slipstream. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Seattle. His website is douglastcole.com.
