Athens 1983
by L. Ward Abel

Apartments out behind the McDonald’s with
Broad Street just beyond. Some songs were written
that winter in Athens, it even snowed like when

Joe showed up one night the roads were closed
to traffic impassible holding an Evan Williams
bottle. Later he drove back to Clayton County.

I remember “Beat the Jungle Back” and railroad
tunes. I jammed in a warehouse or two. O yes
all the while learning about Soviet crop yields

in a classroom near the tracks and river too.

 

 

L. Ward Abel, poet, composer and performer of music, teacher, lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of times in print and online, and is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), Torn Sky Bleeding Blue (erbacce-Press, 2010), and the forthcoming American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012).