Linda Lowe
Singing Sayonara
It’s 60 out and sunny, what more can I ask for? A Sharpie to record the devastation. Marauders to stop marauding. Look at the lands, tree-free from their shenanigans. Look at some dead everything along the way. Marauders come in all sizes now. Bigger than me, smaller than me, my size, size 6 in children’s, with guns of course, that go from teeny tiny to XXL. They’ve been trained and trained, look how their efforts have materialized into a viciously spectacular gung ho all around.
It’s 60 out and sunny, remember? Leave the jacket, leave your hat, leave for heaven’s sake.
The back yard’s on fire, the water’s shut off. There’s no more river to save you, not even a stream. If you’re thirsty, try to swallow a little less often. Thirst is the new trend. Shrivel is the new look, forget beauty, think survival, hard to come by, hard to come by.
Is anyone else doing this, writing it down? Someone must, there must be more than one opinion.
Opinions may be all we have now. I dreamed about it last night, the truth. It was flaming, fierce, red, mad. It said, look out, it said, I’ll be back. Might as well face it, say you’re sorry. You’re sorry, aren’t you? Did you stand up when you could have? Did you say yes or no at the right time? These are easy questions that should not be laughed at, skipped over. Everything depends on true or false when you get right down to it. If you don’t know the difference, you might as well strap on some weights, sink into the swelling ocean, singing Sayonara.
Linda Lowe is the author of the chapbook Karmic Negotiations (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press, 2003), winner of the SPT National Poetry Competition. Her poems and stories have appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Outlook Springs, A Story in 100 Words, The New Verse News, Star 82 Review, as well as in the anthology Weatherings (FutureCycle Press, 2015), edited by David Chorlton and Robert S. King. Lowe lives in Southern California with her husband.
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