Josephine Bridges

Flat Man


In the empty early morning police station parking
lot a flesh and blood man loads a plywood man into
a pickup bed, and a streetlight shines through the
ragged hole in the          center of the flat man's
chest.  Used up                now, fallen in the line
of duty, full of                holes, the blown out
man lies rigid on                a pile of rope and rusty
buckets of roofing              tar.  The pickup coughs and
shudders into action,           bearing the flat man across

the River Styx of dirty rainwater backed up in a gutter,
on to the purifying fire of a woodstove up Stock Slough,
the resting place of secondary heroes.



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