Ryan McCarty

We believed God was dropping coins

in our path as kids – he tossed them 

so often a metaphor sprouted. 

A break in the rain? Buy one get

one free? Morning glories stretching

across a fenceline blocking off

a field of broken glass and puke?

All tips raining down from the Almighty.

Jokes grow up and metaphors go

to seed, like my pregnant wife

leaning over, dropping a quarter 

back in the dirt for needier fingers, quick

bent neck of thanks, just the moment 

a skidding armored car clears the ditch,

flips overhead, slow motion style,

like movies, and a fortune flutters

on us from the sky, while the wreck

burns someone else’s dry grass black. 


Ryan McCarty is a writer and teacher, living in Ypsilanti, MI. Lately, his poems have appeared in Abandoned Mine, Blue Collar Review, Coal City Review, Topical Poetry, and on his father-in-law’s fridge.