written By
August 21, 2024
The blond tabby darts across boiling asphalt, hustles its haunches right at the end before the curb & the white Cadillac swallows it whole. Could I have closed my eyes, contributed some cosmic nudge, sent a jolt into its hustle just a little more. Could I have bent the rules of physics and ribbon the road around the car. In this suburban jungle death lounges as though appeased, coils of metal, plastic, glass, rubber steam-rolling through hearts of overpasses — astonishing lack of injury, except to air, the faded corners of afternoon, cloud-banked ratios & sun-gilded hours tilting in the joists of time. Molten bronze fills sky, blue stretch of bay, yellow stripes, and steaming green marsh. Nowhere to go the bronze does not find you. Death snaps out, like that, another thing gone. I do not want that impossible blond cat to go — broken golden dynamo into ebony ground. I do not want to go.
More from this Author
Joshua Bridgwater Hamilton holds an MFA from Texas State University and a PhD from Indiana University. His books are Excavator (Gnashing Teeth Publishing) and the chapbooks Rain Minnows (Gnashing Teeth Publishing) and Slow Wind (Finishing Line Press).
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