Another Way to Go (Firing Squad)

Michael Prihoda

 

is

                blindness

                some                     kind

                                of

 

Old Testament                  mercy?

 

                                it’s seismic                          the way

 

                the hood puckers

 

                at every                                intake                   of breath.

 

in that blindness lies

a realization of how                                       the universe’s arms

 

never stop widening;                     how                      still

 

a hurtling rock can seem

 

when twelve guns

 

point at one heart

 

 

 

                                crack!!

-ack!

                        -ack!

                                               

   -ack!

 

slump.

 

                                trickle.

 

                some new evolution.



***

Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).