Expectations

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Imagine an elevator on Thanksgiving. You are hurtling into a conflagration of turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and post-modern politics. Your mother, the feminist, stands left. Taking the middle, you and your school chum play at Cockney rhyming slang. Your Uncle Uncle embraces the Madmen Era. He never suspects that your friend, whose ass he pinches, is an expert kick boxer. He expects that gender rules. But it doesn’t. In the hall, she will enlighten him and he will nurse his bruised balls with one highball after another, reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the library.

Observe. You, too, will exceed his expectations.

Gypsy

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A woman worked the aisles of the train, singing a minor key Middle Eastern version of the blues in a guttural language. She wore primary colors in ancient patterns, suggesting crystal balls and gypsy caravans. You could tell she wanted money. Her stooped shoulders and broken teeth said she deserved it. At the end of the car, she pulled a metal bar from her skirts. Twisting it to jimmie the door, she took a breath in before crossing to the next car. Her scarves wrapped around her hand, she skipped across the swiftly moving gap of light above the tracks.

The President Bombs

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When the president declared war, he united the country. Cities of all sizes came out in force to demonstrate. There were signs that read, “The Achilles heel that made America great,” and, “Heel no, we won’t go.”

Three days on, the generals traded the nuclear codes for a military parade. The president tweeted he was joking. Like Reagan saying he’d bomb Iran. No one corrected the president. Reagan said Russia.

Some people remembered. Putin remembered. McCain wanted credit since he’d said, “Bomb, bomb, Iran.” Someone quipped about rockin’ and rollin’ without a plan. Most people agreed. The president bombed again.

 

Four Years Later

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If you laid a transparency of then across now, there’d be no difference. The oak tree was infinitesimally taller. Knee high corn still grew in the muddy fields. The white house, with green slatted shutters, slept on a rise beside an identical lilac. Yellow pig stench choked the air. Even the girl smoking a ciggie with him was the same. College had not really happened. The demonstrations, and the wild blue moons, and the nights up until dawn accumulating debt. None of that was true. The shutters, the tree, the girl, the ciggie. Those were the facts. The other was fiction.

Sanctuary

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They breathe incense and say a prayer for conscience. And strength. And a Godspeed  journey. En route to safety, supplicants meet an impasse. Unyielding metal vehicles push forward to the blast of mindless pontificating, spewing angry exhaust fumes to fill potholes. Polluting, endangering, inspiring fear. Forks in the road destroy the path to sanctity. Take a wrong turn, you’ll miss heaven’s gate.

At the border, wooden buildings loom. Maybe there’s a cross, maybe inside is sanctuary. Immunity for fugitives who flee to sacred ground. A medieval state of mind, a modern state of grace. Decried in the rush to judgement.

The Speed of Change

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She hit the pavement at a fast walk. Was he following? No matter. Dusk called out pinpricks of starlight and dark bat shadows.

“They roost in caves.” He scanned the sky.

“It’s warmer when they’re all together.” She hugged her arms, working her short legs to take two steps for his one.

He slowed the pace, wrapping her shoulders in rough tweed.

Small actions, a snowballing effect.

Water droplets on his Einstein frizz fractured under each passing street lamp. She noticed.

At her flat, she returned his jacket. She closed the door, unsettled by the speed of change between them.

 

I Woke Up

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The careening red VW, no license plate, jumps the sidewalk. Zero culpability. It simply climbs over me. Waving my arms, I’m screaming like a madman while it turns the corner. The bug is looking for an address, looking with yellow insect eyes mounted on the windshield. What does it see through those compound eyes? Multiple images of the same thing from slightly different angles enhanced by kaleidoscopic colors like it’s on an acid trip. How will it know when to stop? I call the police. After the adrenaline ebbs, after I hear the explosion, then I wake up.

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