Espionage Serpentine tendrils of steam waft skyward. None are left to contemplate the political funding behind the shots. Spilled blood makes the price tag illegible. This date of misplaced infamy becomes a calendar’s consolation prize. A million hushed whispers consort in the hollows where shadows conspire to rally lost spirits to ungodly racket. The complex cacophony hides another racket. Deadly decibels of Havana Syndrome disperse to left and right eardrums of those denying their symptoms, where perpetual brain fog takes fatigued fighters out, shot by shot, decimating those double and triple agents prized for chameleon-like abilities on diplomatic dates. “I believe I have a migraine,” she says on a first date, yet his heart beats back like a newly strung racket: resilient, resplendent, focused still on romantic prize. How many bad pickup lines did he have left before admitting that he truly had no shot and that this experience leads him nowhere. A worthwhile love can take you anywhere. That’s what her profile said in a post dated three years prior. Her target practice shot, taking aim, headphones dulling the racket, wearing workout clothes that showed her left side profile to great advantage, a bullseye prize. The deft mastery of conversation is no surprise. The intel operative is comfortable everywhere. Years erase pretenders, till only the best are left. Mirrors confirm that this agent has no expiration date. She remembers back to when it seemed a risky racket, but now she is on top, taking her best shots. Separating diabolical via dialectical with bloodshot eyes stings, so shades hide the evidence he might apprise to raise suspicion, elevate eyebrow, help quell the racket of accusation and blame lashing out from somewhere instinctive, distinctive as a DNA read, a carbon-dated fossil for a museum show about the only humans left. He downs a shot of liquid gold, knowing where this is headed, another prize for this special date with destiny, another bracket with one name left.
Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He has five collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing) and most recently, Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), a current Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur finalist. He also has two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize.
Grand Little Things 