Poet and Writer
J. L. L. Kroll
"The Man Who Came Back" first appeared in Spillway #26 in autumn of 2018. It is also featured in the chapbook, Ghost Town Girls, and was reprinted in the January 2019 issue of the online journal, Portside.
The Man Who Came Back
The man who came back
from the war all wrong
used to belong here. Now he sits
barefoot in the middle of a lawn
with a guitar and wanders
the downtown in dirty clothes, toting
two bags of newspapers. With his long
hair and eyes like traffic lights--
alternating blank and panic-pain--he
is a sore that should be hidden. So your mother seems to think. "It's a shame,"
she declares, as if someone slovenly
had left a broken washing machine
on their front porch too long.
Every night, your father listens to
news of the faraway war. But to you,
the barefoot man with the bags
is the only solid evidence that war exists.
He is what you see inside your mind
when any adult around you dares
carelessly to name it.
The poems in Kroll's first chapbook are accessible, thought-provoking, and sometimes heart-breaking. These meticulously crafted poems often read like short, short stories or character sketches, and touch on themes of small town life, adolescence, inertia, and escape.
Amazon.com
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J.L.L. Kroll delivers up a series [of] gritty and poignant shapshots from the lives of girls coming of age in a faded midwestern town....As they drift through a town that seems strangely empty and indifferent to them, these ghost town girls will haunt you.
KG, Amazon reviewer
Preview from the novelWheatland Burning
When a wave of pain was coming, Dominic could focus on nothing else. But then the pain washed over him and dissipated and awareness returned. And so it was as he was sitting there on the cool cement floor of the abandoned gas station, breathing heavily and hoping against hope that the most recent wave was to be the last, that Dominic became aware of the fact that he was not alone.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
A sound was coming from over by the window. It was a metallic noise, like somebody tapping a metal object on the window ledge. Clank. Clank. Clank. Over and over again.
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Was somebody else here in the station? Had somebody come in while he and Celia were sleeping? Some ill-intentioned Outsider or Illegal? The thought made Dominic's heart beat faster.
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And now he thought, too, of the bike parked outside, right out in the open, by the gas pumps. The full moon was shining brightly. The bike certainly could easily be seen. Might it be stolen? Dominic felt for the key in his jacket pocket. But couldn't some Outsiders hotwire old-time vehicles even without a key? He thought he had heard or read about that. If the Indian motorcycle was stolen tonight, Dominic didn't like his chance of ever getting to Northland. And if he lost the cycle now, he thought, he would have given up his CIC card for nothing.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
The sound was insistent and repetitive. Dominic stood up and quietly moved from the back of the shop and around the end of a central shelving unit until he could see the whole of the front window. It was lit up with the glow of the full moon.
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Silhouetted in the broken window was a large, dog-like animal. It was licking out residue from one of the tuna cans. A coywolf.