Spring 2022, Volume 32

Poetry by John Loughlin

The Midnight School Bus

Picks the children up
And smells faintly of milk,
Dogs, firecrackers.

On it, rides the new girl
With a mole like Jupiter’s storm.
She can still hear

The adults calling out
Her name in the woods,
Can feel the ferny imprint

Of the flashlights dancing,
Interlacing through
The wiry branches.

Abstract sentences
Written atop the snow
Asking when she’ll come home.

 

 

 

BIO: John Loughlin’s poems have appeared in journals such as Another Chicago Magazine (ACM); Black Warrior Review; Colorado Review; Copper Nickel; Forklift, Ohio; Phoebe; Ploughshares; Sonora Review; and others. Future work will be appearing in Rhino. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Loughlin has worked primarily in the tech sector for the last twenty years in a variety of sales and business development roles. He lives in a suburb of Chicago with his wife and daughter.