Ross White

cantfindit

Ross White is the author of Charm Offensive, winner of the 2019 Sexton Prize, and two chapbooks, How We Came Upon the Colony and The Polite Society. He is the director of Bull City Press, an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He teaches creative writing, podcasting, publishing, and grammar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is the editor of Four Way Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others. With Matthew Olzmann, he edited Another & Another: An Anthology from the Grind Daily Writing Series. He also has a boutique design firm, Spock & Associates, and a weekly trivia show and podcast, Trivia Escape Pod. Source

UNSTEADY

Hope staggers in like a drunk

to the last bar open. Lays down a five

and groans However much can this get me.

Reeks of cigarettes and bleach.

God, he is uneven and shaky

but his eyes are steely jade,

his pulse throbs sweetly

above his eyelid. The crowd

thins quick when the news

comes on, but I’m swooning

by the jukebox as another country

crooner belts out woes. Hope

flicks a Zippo, can’t get it to light.

He keeps trying. I like that about him.

Published:

None

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Classical

Anthology Years:

2022

Themes:

Faith & Hope

Literary Devices:

Dialogue

conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem

Juxtaposition

the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect

Personification

the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing

Sensory Detail

words used to invoke the five senses (vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell)