Empyrean
  • Featured
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Contests
    • Poetry Contest
    • Fiction Contest
    • Non-Fiction Contest
  • Support us
  • Advertise with us
  • General Submissions
  • Moon Submissions
  • Zodiac Submissions
  • Issues
  • Featured
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Contests
    • Poetry Contest
    • Fiction Contest
    • Non-Fiction Contest
  • Support us
  • Advertise with us
  • General Submissions
  • Moon Submissions
  • Zodiac Submissions
  • Issues
Working: Vol. 4, No. 2 - Issue 14 Summer 2025

a glimpse into the past or future

Issue 6
There's a vision I keep having.
I am horizontal in the garden,
eager blades of grass tickle my chin.
I stare, eyes closed, feeling
each pen stroke paint my skin.
 
Etching preemptive epitaphs
for family friends I just saw
yesterday. When I awake, moments
before the alarm clock,
I check myself for evidence.
 
I find it just behind my eyelids,
"Life is no way to treat an animal"
inscribed on thirty tombstones,
each one sun-wrecked, time-worn
and still warm to the touch.

C.W. BRYAN is a student at Georgia State University. He lives with his clowder of cats (the best to ever do it) and girlfriend in Atlanta, GA. He is currently writing daily poetry prompts with a friend of his at poetryispretentious.com. He is published at the Deep South Magazine and Door is a Jar Magazine and has 6 poems forthcoming at El Portal, Field Guide Magazine, and the Seventh Quarry Press.

Copyright © 2025 Empyrean Literary Magazine, L.L.C.
  • Featured
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Contests
    • Poetry Contest
    • Fiction Contest
    • Non-Fiction Contest
  • Support us
  • Advertise with us
  • General Submissions
  • Moon Submissions
  • Zodiac Submissions
  • Issues