“Rips Tears and Lines of Power No 1” © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

forward

a trump freak
who i see
at the gym
regularly
but never
talk to
sat on the bike
next to me
while i was
on the elliptical
and said,
“man
for all that
work
you’re not moving
anywhere.”
he smiled
and a beam
from a silver tooth
shot me
in the eye.
“yeah,”
i said.
“i could say
the same thing
about you
on the bike.”
a sinister laugh
spewed from
his belly.
2 minutes later,
he paused
fox news
on his phone
and asked,
“hey
do you know
anyone personally
who’s died
from fentanyl?”
a peculiar question –
interaction really,
since we only
ever bickered
over politics.
but it got me
thinking:
why go
round and round
on something
that neither party
is going
to agree on?
why not find
common ground
that propels
the human connection
forward?
we’d each
lost people
to fentanyl
overdoses.
it broke
some ground
for us.
we didn’t become
best friends
or anything,
but we found
a way
to move forward.

 

insufferable

they
tell me
i have
to be
practical
and go
along with
war,
death,
and humanity
exercising
inhumanity
like it’s
humane.
well,
no.
there’s
a line
scott laudati
draws
in
play the devil –
“we could’ve
done anything,
and this
is what
we did.”
humanity’s
crime
is that
we’re
insufferable.
nobody
will love us
and
we don’t
even love
ourselves.
another crime:
laudati
might go
unnoticed
like
a short list
of other
great writers
that should
live
long beyond
their time.

 

Ken Kakareka is an American writer. He has a collection of poems and stories on its way with Anxiety Press. His words have appeared or are on their way in numerous rags including The Piker Press, BarBar, and The Gorko Gazette.

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well a school psychologist. She loves hiking the urban and woodland trails of “anywhere” (and pausing often to shoot photos) with her very patient husband (and often collaborator), Ted. Her images have been featured on the covers of magazines such as Ibbetson Street, Wild Roof Journal, Poesy Magazine, Humana Obscura, and Arkansas Review; as well as on the pages of publications such as Oddball Magazine, Ember Chasm Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Beaver Magazine, and Lateral. Her works are archived at institutions such as Poets House NYC, Brown University, and Harvard University.