Contributor: James Robert Rudolph

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Horatio, they call me Horatio,
loyal, lender of hands,
I bleed blue
because I’m true.

Pieces of hearts
cup in my hands
knit in my warmth.
I cannot break hearts
just remake hearts.

A lover’s deep shivving
brought you here to
my workshop of salves,
cuts from the desired
worth the wound,
a paraclete’s to restore
but nothing more.


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James Robert Rudolph is a retired psychologist and teacher having returned to old haunts in northern New Mexico after a busy career in Minneapolis. He believes in old-style magical realism, that inspired by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the high desert, and the deep, broad sky of the American mountain west. Recent poems have appeared in The Artistic Muse, Mad Swirl, and Bewildering Stories, among others.