The Games

Abstract

1. Morning News Mist drifting above wheel ruts and matted salt hay blinks back the first delusion of the day: your voices locked in friendly combat out in the arena of mud and marsh grass where a hermit crab, one claw held high, plays the gladiator with a dying gull, scuttling with its kind in the stink of engine oil. Both of you connived at the martyr’s role, your dueling letters to the editor a life and death struggle though nobody now knows what thumbs up or down means. So in these lines let me try to keep you near while clarities of air rise up against the stones of our crumbling coliseums when the IED blows the bus fifty feet into the air. 2. At the Party You were throwing a party when the phone rang to say he’d been shot at point-blank range, but all through the evening...