In One Breath

A cop informed me that my son was both homosexual and dead. Shot at a bar he had apparently haunted.

“Will you accept the body?” the cop asked.

A thousand bats’ wings pulsed inside me before I said “No.”

And the Mugs Look On With Mouths Agape

The stone’s silent flight through the open window seems calculated like a falcon’s swoop except for the clash of rock on glass. Coffeepot pieces plink to the parquet floor, the stone-bird gloats in hot brown blood, and the guilty ask “What broke?”

(photo credit: wikimedia commons)