M. Benjamin Thorne




Spare me your “forever-burning” fire.
I’ve learned all flames yield to ash.
Speak not of fated soul-mates;
the last one left with all my cash.
Don’t even bother singing songs
of salad days and eternal youth.
People grow old and wilt
like lettuce. That’s the truth.

Swear instead that when I come home,
my greeting won’t be empty space;
that in bed the only cold I’ll feel
is winter, and not your vacant face; 
and when in the dead of night terrors
wake me screaming from my sleep, 
your voice pushes against the shadows
and soothes me back into the placid deep.





A Pushcart Prize nominee, M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Feral, Neologism Poetry Journal, San Antonio Review, Thimble Lit Mag, Last Syllable Lit, and Salvation South. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.