IT IS SO HARD TO TELL WHEN PEOPLE ARE LYING

We talked the morning of my parent's

39th wedding anniversary in a fifteen minute

prepaid conversation from one of

the last payphones on the face

of the earth, in a prison where he

is serving life. He sounded like

he earned a peace of mind that

wasn't illegal. He tried to cheer me

up with the power of positive thinking.

I told him about my girlfriend''s death.

I asked him how he coped with

my mother's death. He said she was

such a beautiful lady, gratitude singing

in the sonic tone of his voice.

He warned me and told me to think

of the good times and nothing more.

He spun his voice as he told me

he got a promotion at his job

in prison as head seamstress--

he did not ask me to put money

on his books. H e sounded

like he had managed to grow

as a human being after a

lifetime of demons. He brushed

off those demons from his shoulders

and a bunch of them landed on me

and are still holding me hostage,

all of them silent and hidden in deep

into my many shadows, unafraid to kill me

until our hopeful call came to an abrupt end.

Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. He is the author of the poetry collection Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Spillway, Up the River, Suisun Valley Review, KYSO Flash, Home Planet News, Cultural Weekly, Big Hammer, Misfit Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry and So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.