Détentes (redux)

There’s a tool they use to set things right.

But it won’t protect them from the bitter cold of a nighttime swim through the shark infested straits.

A tool of last resort — shaman life hacks! Tabernacle huckster butters!

And us!

We. Decked out with finger guns.

“Be a papper slapper with a doot doot doot doot do!”

Birdsongs for birdies in glam processsion of hip slapping.

“Hingum, Jingum — do do do.”

Milkweed in the shadows and other docile locations.

Détentes from a muddled past — prepaid insurgencies dropped out of Monroe’s pants into a bay of pigs —

“wheepa deepa poo pow pow!”

Whistling childhood advertising ear worms — jingling out of key — these jagged equations validate nothing but the phlegm in our souls.

“You can’t please yourself, but you might can please your soul.”

Grazin’ in the grass is where I wanna be scattering my dead father’s ashes — throwing a handful over my shoulder once, and filling fire ant monticules with the next.

Watching the magic 8 ball answer requests from another world.

What I’m Reading:

“An author is just a temporary state, anyway, a way to get from a story to reality.”

— Debbie Urbanski / After World: A Novel