A Boy Called Risk

A Boy Called Risk Reginald Shepherd (bio) Winter wind that wears the ghost of light away, whiteout shutting down days months at a time. The pigeon soul combs sidewalks cauterized with ice for crumbs, wings frayed, lice-riddled. He walks through snow-blind January, February blusters wrapped in a black wool coat. The body walks through half a year to heat-dazed streets and avenues: looks up into a face smudged in a windowpane where one has no color to call his own and one calls all of them by name. He lies in the abandoned boyhood all afternoon while blinds stir in a box fan’s unconvincing breeze, rain rubs through closed eyes. That was a summer left behind, a hustler in a backwards baseball cap leaning on a corner streetlamp, smoking an unfiltered cigarette. The body burns to charcoal, smoke curls through the chest and brands the lungs. He’d like to breathe that burnished skin, he’s leaning out too far again, just for a glimpse. Reginald Shepherd Reginald Shepherd teaches at Northern Illinois University. His first book of poems, Some Are Drowning, won the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry. A 1995 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he is also author of Angel, Interrupted, a second volume of poems. Copyright © 1998 Charles H. Rowell

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