I clomb the—well, the wall—what was a wall—
of a ruined church just slouching by the way,
and gripping where the mortar’d failed the stones
I caught the bell’s attendant chain, and pulled,
showering the whole forsaken valley
with a ripe and spacious fruit, wide, heavy, fruit,
(just as, an hour before, by stairs of stone,
I shook some apple boughs above my wife,
that she could catch the boughthest fruits,
for I could not without falling).
The author of two chapbooks, Crow Lungs (2013), and In Modica the Gargoyle (2019), Simon Avery is a well-on-his-way poet and writer and SAT tutor from Cleveland, OH. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Kenyon Review.
Detroit Lit Mag 