i went out to feed the cat just now
and saw the most amazing thing on
the freeway exit ramp right behind
my house. stopped for the light at the bottom of
the ramp, a large white s-u-v with
four uniformed special forces guys
riding shotgun on the running boards.
i thought, jesus christ, who the fuck is
that? the s-u-v had tinted windows.
if it weren’t for the special forces
guys, i never would have noticed it.
one of the special forces guys was
wearing mirrored shades. another had
those white plastic handcuffs sticking out
of his back pocket, or maybe hooked
to his belt. all four special forces
guys were wearing flak jackets and helmets
and olive-drab. they had guns and small
radios. they were looking all around
while they waited for the light to change.
there was nothing on the news about
anyone important being in
town. the cat was waiting to be fed.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
the perfect woman now lives in our neighborhood.
she walks her dogs at dusk.
two brown dogs on two stainless leashes,
one perfect woman in tow.
she walks her dogs down the sidewalks,
crosses streets, cuts through alleyways.
who does she think she is, to bring her perfect self into this forsaken place,
this neighborhood of shotgun shacks, empty twelve-packs,
thirty-year-old cars on concrete blocks?
she is a goddess come to visit the damned.
we can scarcely stand to glance at her.
we can scarcely stand to turn our glance away.
she is as perfect as anything we have ever seen.
we will stand in our front yards, and wait for her to return.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Certain secret sorrows, certain tricks of fate which awake in us a whole world of painful thoughts, which suddenly unclose to us the mysterious door of moral suffering, complicated, incurable; all the deeper because they appear benign, all the more bitter because they are intangible, all the more tenacious because they appear almost factitious, leave in our souls a sort of trail of sadness, a taste of bitterness, a feeling of disenchantment, from which it takes a long time to free ourselves.” – Guy de Maupassant, “Minuet” (trans. McMaster, et al.)