Three Poems by Ryan Di Francesco

I Keep Having the Same Dream

It’s reflected
inside a lake.

Two boys chucking rocks
at a dead salmon
washed ashore.

The seagulls come
and eat its eyes.

Then I am eaten.

I TELEPHONE NIAGARA FALLS THIS EVENING

It was a moth
in a Midwest town.

It ate the backs
of my eyes.

It told me
to take a knife
and carve

this note:

You are late.
And unfit.
In retrospect.

I Am Building a Desert Around Me

There is the oasis.

Dandelions grow
across concrete plazas.

I pick up puddles of seeds,
hold them in my hand.

And wait for a gust of wind.



Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer, teacher, and editor based in Ontario. His journalistic work has appeared in The Toronto Star, and his poetry and fiction are published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Pacific Review, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax, an independent literary and arts press. His chapbooks include Mirage of Burning Things (Parlyaree Press), Skeleton Mine Disaster (Bottlecap Press), and The Paper Hound and Canadian Classic (Alien Buddha Press). His Jack Spicer–inspired collection Along Tongues Full of Time is forthcoming with Ethel Zine & Micro Press, and his full-length poetry collection Let the Dogs Have It is forthcoming with Parlyaree Press. He was shortlisted for the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize.