Somewhere there’s a rusted dozer bucket full of Stalin heads, Saddam Hussein split noggins, hunky-punk bug eyes, and while I share the world’s passion for lopping heads off idols, I’d prefer to play guillotine games from afar. From novel haunts, say, like Hannibal Lecter’s kitchenette, or hard-to-imagine-ever-visiting locales, like Devil’s Island. Which is why I was unprepared for cataclysm in my own backyard.
I was sipping coffee in my robe, deadheading patio pots, when the bowl to the birdbath cleaved into three parts. There were no squirrel or hawk thugs in sight, no roving bomb throwers to blame for the ruin. A fractal mob might’ve been at work—reptiled cracks waking up, protesting their lot.
I thought the base would be first to go—so many mower hits, string-trimmer nicks. It never occurred to me to fret about the disk top. How could a sparrow’s weight ever become a burden? I traced the fallen bowl’s Greek key pattern. More chunks fell from its broken smile.
poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in B O D Y, Contemporary Haibun Online, Gone Lawn, Gyroscope Review, Maudlin House, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Unbroken Journal, and Whiskey Island.
