By Aaron Connor
Mutter old man on sun bleached porches, white chairs groan beneath dead weight.
Inside babble trickles forth from women, the crazy women, who think that Tommy or Henry or any one of a number of boys will be coming home.
Though they died horribly twenty years ago, the babble dribbles forth like the humming of flies wings in the sticky summer heat.
It rolls out into the world like the sweat on a waking man’s brow. And they sit complaining. About this and that, the women about the heat, the men ancient politics. And neither party understands it any better than when they began twenty years ago nor any better when they pose in the morning. They do not cope any more, they are simply recordings, like the etchings and engravings on the porch, from years and years of chairs being moved into the sun and out of the rain. There are newspapers from long ago, yellow and ripped, living still, in the time which once was. They’re waiting for the war to end, but they are not coming back from this. It’s do or die and a matter of time. They’ve died but time’s not yet expired. I see them sit and revel in yesterdays and sweat in the sun and curse the flies.
Damn them anyway, darting back and forth like blind spots. And while the women sit and sigh, the men plot to kill. And it’s too hot to complain any more. And a fly lands on the window and one of the men passes a folded document of politics to another. And politics come crashing down, on the fly and all at once, all is still save for the falling of the fly and the siren-like screams of the crickets.
And the men don’t complain.