Artwork: The Shadow That Became a Mirror
by Bill Wolak
Caught in the Headlights
Michael A. Arnzen
Bright antlers of light
spring from the temples
of the backwoods hunter
who felled an elder buck
that fated night.
As he drives home, he freezes,
caught in bright headlights;
steering arms lock
as he careens towards a truck
in the opposite lane,
veering right.
And through windshield spray
flies a head, trailing brain:
on a tree branch impaled,
a trophy for elk and whitetail –
a skull with a long overbite.
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We All Fall Down
Michael A. Arnzen
Falling is never a quiet affair.
When our feet slip out from under
us like some kind of invisible car-
pet and we become gravity’s sick play
thing: half of us stands stock still
where we once stood, unable to catch –
just looking on in helpless disbe-
lief as the other half tumbles down
and effortlessly contorts away.
We transfix on this other, awkward
and clumsy fragment of us,
like a mother sitting politely
behind the windowpane
at an electrocution chair ceremony,
mildly ashamed by her criminal son.
The soundtrack is a scream
from someone else, muffled and
incomprehensibly soft even though
we are left holding the grocery bag
of our guts inside our chest
praying they won’t spill away
as our cold body splays
around our invisible feet.
Pain brings us swiftly back down
into ourselves right before
we might try to simply walk away.
Some of us laugh, some cry,
some curl up, smothered silent
in agony, clutching our afflictions
like a warm pillow.
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she's gonna wash that man right out of
her hair
Michael A. Arnzen
he snuck into her shower,
naked, groping, with that
faraway look in his eyes
as if his lizard brain sin
was all that was gawking her
and could simply be washed away
even while he committed it
and when he shuddered
she reached for the angular
glass bottle behind him
and impaled him
with the prefabricated jag
then she bashed his head
against natural stone tile
his mud red gunk in the grout
as she washed his blood down,
joining his sin in the sewage
while the water droplets
magnified the words
on the bottle’s bright white label
right above an icon
of an innocent-looking bunny:
cruelty-free
