A big thank you to Editor Steve Cawte for publishing three of my poems in Issue 24 of Impspired.   

https://impspired.com/impspired-issue-24/

Here is one of the three:

Metallic Pinafore Apron

Pay the fine.
Pass the Rubicon
in one irrevocable journey.

As far back as the Eden’s residents’ first crossing,
the spare severity of the land
has been protected by
an impenetrable bib of aridity.

An ancient symbol 
of bleak permanence
is etched upon every door.
No bronze doors these.

Lurking in the darkness, 
a nameless woman bleats, 
within each wretched town.

Iron draperies fall in abstract folds,
heavily sag upon every airless window.

It takes supreme effort to take a single step,
and,
even if amulets were allowed here,
their properties would be nullified.

Like a steel cage with no slats, 
harboring unsleeping factories of fume and slag.
Like a metallic pinafore apron,
a protective shield for this machine
clings resolutely against all that should stand free.