A Poem by Zach Fechter

Damaged Souls

It is me,
And it traveled hundreds of
Miles to get here,
And here I stand,
Alone on an endless parking lot,
Vast and flat and hot,
Piles of mortar and trash,
The dust flat upon the harsh blackened crust,
Laid dead by the rolling heat.

There are shimmering dancers in the distance
And beads forming on my brow,
Cement trees rising up,
A concrete parting of the Red Sea,
A distant horizon,
A wasteland of brick and stone and glass,
A hot city;
There is no heart here,
There is no love song here.

A radio lies broken
Next to a pile of stone,
Like the kind from modern Athens,
And I hear it
Coughing up the last words of man:
“Oh sweet damaged souls,
Sweet damaged souls,
Hold hands and cry tonight,
So that we may finally have some rain.”



Zach Fechter lives in Southern California and has been published in multiple editions of Poetry Quarterly. He studied accounting at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. He is 24 years old.