Courtyard Elegy
By Kent Neal
The curved arm and inclined head
of a ballerina. Gunshots
from a video game on the ground floor
startle me. From the couch,
we admire the ripped torso of a man
in his twenties doing the dishes, as the trees
flex their branches. A black cat tumbles
from the third floor to the flower-potted
terrace below. Smells of couscous drift down
from upstairs. Through our wrought-iron railing,
a woman in her fifties with wet hair jumps
as a monster haunts her big-screen T.V. Someone
kicks a crushed soda can. With a water pistol,
a woman in her seventies crouches down, aims
at her husband. He shoots first.
What can they see between our shutters?
On a Louis XV couch, me hugging an urn
with you inside, future dust whirl.
Kent Neal, a gay poet, has published three poetry collections: The Compass, the Labyrinth, and the Hourglass (2015), Where Saltwater Mixes With Freshwater (2017), and A Ray of Light in the Lion’s Eye (2021). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Originally from Oregon, Kent lives in Lyon, France. One of his poems won 6th place for non-rhyming poetry in the 2025 Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. His work has appeared in The Hole In The Head Review, Bicoastal Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Visit: http://www.kentneal.com
