The Throbbing Hypnotism of Sorrow

We are marching toward the killing box like drunken ants; insects intuit with precision.
We stagger.

The Queen can expect bread or berries, branches or string.
What do we bring?

When my sons were two, they loved the sacred, enveloping dark of night.
Its mystery was comfort.

Now, they imagine monsters where there are none, stub toes on slung toys, once folded
but now strewn blue jeans or untied shoes.

The horn is blaring! The horn is blaring, and the drumming of our fingers is strident!

Railway cars jostle and creak, hurrying past one another at speed.
Near collision course, but no contact, no torn flesh, no spit
or salty tears

Only the shrieking near miss that frightens, and nervous glances
confirm the menace of the others.

A bridge is out - systematic failure - someone will die.
We are unmoved.

The rusting of metal is simply fate, a function of time, boring, like living tombs where drugged skeletons slump and sleep alone, unremembered.

A laborer climbs the ladder and weeps, presses ear to beam, knocks hammer along frame, searching for the wound. She has vigilance, and a steady gaze, and so she can heal.

But bitterness, the throbbing hypnotism of sorrow, is a twitching ferocity
that devours.

Blake Kilgore grew up in Tornado Alley, spending most of his first three decades in Texas and Oklahoma. Now, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four sons, where he’s just completed his twenty-first year teaching history to junior high students. That’s how his love for story began - recounting the (mostly) true stories from olden times. Eventually, he wanted to tell stories of his own, and you can find some of these in Lunch Ticket, Stonecoast Review, Midway Journal, Rathalla Review, Crack the Spine, and other fine journals. To learn more, go to blakekilgore.com.