Bio
Doug Bolling’s poetry has appeared in Posit, BlazeVOX, Kestrel, Water-Stone Review, Redactions, The Missing Slate (with interview), and De La Mancha among others. He has received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations and several awards and lives in the greater Chicago area.
Trigger Warning
You saw them cut the heart out of
The havens of dream and imagination.
These were the secret spaces,
The stories that keep us alive
Making the path visible in the
Impossible fog,
The flame in the hearth
That tells of the sun.
They handed you the knife,
Its erudite blade silent and smooth
As an unread page in a book.
You stared into the blank wall
as if to find the answer there
but nothing spoke.
You thought of the blood
From which the dream, the vision.
You dropped the knife
Whatever the verdict.