You Can Run By Alec Solomita

The blues quotes Joe Louis

as I take a hit of weed.

The blues says to me,

“You can run but you can’t hide.”

Been running pretty well

until the arthritis began

to visit my left knee 

while the gout sojourns

in my big toe. Oh, I can

still run, but Jesse Owens

I am not. And, you say, hide?

And I say where?

I’m back in seventh grade

when I came in second-to-last

in the 50. I won’t say who

came in last, but his first

name was Mitchell.

’Course we had nowhere to hide

as the big boys clapped us 

over the finish line.

At first the hit of skunk

belies the blues’ remark

but the blues is always right.

You can run, or try,

to the sunny side of the street,

but from Brownie McGhee 

and Big Bill Broonzy, well,

there ain’t no escape, ain’t no harbor.

They slip through the dope

like the high notes of a blues harp.

Alec Solomita is a writer working in the Boston area. His fiction has appeared in

the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Southword Journal, among other

publications. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His poetry

has appeared in Poetica, MockingHeart Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, The Lake, The Galway Review, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His poetry

chapbook “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017. His full-length poetry book,

“Hard To Be a Hero,” was released by Kelsay Books last spring.