Incoming Fire​

Issue 18

Billy drifts after the war

and Momma crawls across the floor
in Safeway,
screaming, "Get down!"


Flamethrowers and flower arrangements
Bic lighters and red roses
salute from green plastic vases.

Long lines in the grocery store
wind through employees talking
in support groups
ignoring customers,
whispering,
pointing.

A shopping cart, unattended
rolls by.
 
Cleanup on aisle three.

Gun barrels,
cleaned and packed,
lie on the psychiatrist's couch,
firing bullets indiscriminately.
 
Momma, still crawling
on the Safeway floor, cries out,
"Get down!
Incoming mortars!"

Billy, stoic in the express lane,
holds sixteen items,
in the fifteen-item or fewer lane.

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SCOTT SHARPE loves to write poetry that makes the banal collide with the world just beyond our grasp. He has been published in Workers Write!, Comical Cadence and Pretty Near Poems for Humor Consumers and Irony Buffs, among others.
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