em>Photography © Chad Parenteau

 

The Final Recap

A newspaper left on a chair.
Headlines spill like weak black tea.
We try to avoid them but
they puddle on the café floor
and stick to the soles of our shoes.
The downpour framed in the doorway
is news enough for us to process.
Gusts treble and crash through trees
that have never done anyone harm.

The headlines refer to events
beyond our sweep of perception.
Riots at political rallies.
Mass starvation in Gaza.
Masked thugs with badges
trashing those whose color offends.
Our dictator dictates in shades
of rhetoric no one can catch.
Soon the newspapers will pulp

in silence: unsold, unread, unloved.
No record of our era will last
long enough to dent the absence.
Our bodies will freefall into
a space too large for the universe.
Galaxies spinning out of control
will slash the distance and bleed us
of our unwritten memoirs, stories
that crumble at the slightest touch.

 

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities, all of which thought he was weird. Now he lives with his cats and long-suffering partner in the darkest part of the woods. He has published some stuff here and there.

Chad Parenteau is Associate Editor of Oddball Magazine.