It was something one of us said. I don’t remember which. Everything happened so quickly. Lines were crossed before they could be drawn. And then, our entrenched positions were beyond reconciliation. With every utterance, we spat the hot, sticky air back and forth. Both of us instilling each syllable with maximum venom. Perhaps we tired as the toxic atmosphere permeated our pugilistic hearts. Or maybe we just ran out of insults. Anyway, here we are. Resigned to an uneasy silence. In separate rooms.
tumid, fly-blown
an evening which can only end
in thunder
is an ecologist whose hobbies are best summarized as birds and words. A regular contributor to haiku and haibun journals, he has poetry published in Blithe Spirit, Contemporary Haibun Online, Frogpond, The Haibun Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Modern Haiku, Presence, Poetry Quarterly, and Rattle, among others. He is senryu editor for the short form journal cattails.
Kelly’s collection of haiku and related works, Small Hadron Divider (Red Moon Press, 2020), received an honorable mention in the Touchstone Book Awards. He is also the author of a collection of haiku, senryu, and haibun: Hammerscale from the Thrush’s Anvil (Alba Publishing, 2016).
