Jeff Ewing — Evening at the Downturn

Evening at the Downturn

I don’t think I’ll miss,
she says, any one thing
more than another,

implicating, besides
the light jalousied through
the pergola, a blue jay

diving to pluck
a hornworm off a tomato
plant. I acclaim

the perfection
of the worm’s ugliness,
its near-invisibility

on the stalk.
She recants, denounces
the ugliness in

its perfection,
the green leaf tips already
turning brown.

Even here under
the beauty of an evening
at the downturn

our divided loyalties
show. Two sides to the same
coin tossed refutably

up: the radiant
flash at apex, the dusk-
leaden fall.

Jeff Ewing's poems can be found in literary journals including ZYZZYVA, Sugar House Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Willow Springs, Tule Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader. He is the author of the short story collection The Middle Ground, forthcoming in February 2019 from Into the Void Press. His fiction has been published in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including Crazyhorse, Southwest Review, Into the Void, Cold Mountain Review, and SAND. A number of Jeff’s essays and nonfiction pieces have been featured in the Sacramento News & Review, including "A Ditch Runs Through It", which was reprinted in Utne Reader. He grew up in Sacramento, and lives there still with his wife and daughter.