In the Blink of an Eye
By
Jeffrey Zable
The degenerate clouds have metamorphosed in my brain
and as the rain shoots down I remember the many lives
that I wasted while running through the forest of severed branches.
The suicide clock without hands moans like an animal
stripped of its meat, lying by the side of the road.
Help me, I think to myself, as I sit by the window, the window
that looks out onto the frozen lake in which a man with my face
is half submerged, unable to move a muscle.
And as I try to remember how my mind and body
arrived at this moment, a thousand years have passed me by
in the blink of an eye.
Appeared in Ephemeral Literary Review, early 2023
Wondering
You can’t always bless what kills. . .
“Why not?” asked the aardvark of the canary.
And just as the clock struck 7 the window opened
and the rain came pouring in, while I prayed it wouldn’t
reach me in the tub, give me such shivers that I’d die
before I got to the towels on the shelf.
And with that I returned to my internal muttering
only to remember the time my neighbor banged on the door
while I was bathing. “Let me in!” she yelled,
“I haven’t a single lump of sugar and it’s my last cup of coffee!”
“Mother isn’t here!” I shouted back, and eventually she went away.
I rose from the tub, shook myself dry, and listened to the rain,
wondering if I’d make it through another day. . .
Appeared in Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2022
Making the Most of It
The beating stone called to me. Its voice like a dynamic pineapple
sailing through the ears of incendiary calliopes.
Then the phone rang, and someone said the gas and lights would be
turned off. So I responded, “Go ahead, you son of a defrocked satyr.
I don’t care what anyone says or does to me anymore!”
From there I walked to a restaurant where a swan took my name,
informing me it would only be three days before I got a table, but there
was an excellent chance that they’d run out of sauerkraut.
“Run out of sauerkraut!” I shouted at the swan. “You go back and tell
the cook to save me some; that I come from a long line of kings and queens;
that I could turn this place into the pet shop from hell!”
“No problem, sir!” said the swan.
Heading home, I noticed that people were falling dead in the street and
that many looked like my old boss who I hated, who I thought had died
at least 10 years earlier from a loss of blood.
“Oh well!” I said to myself, walking around the bodies. “If that’s how it is,
I’ll just have to make the most of it!”
Appeared in Tigershark, late 2020
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. He's published five chapbooks, and his writing has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies, more recently in A Sufferer's Digest, Ranger, Sein Und Werden, The Raven's Perch,The Opiate, Corvus, and many others…
By
Jeffrey Zable
The degenerate clouds have metamorphosed in my brain
and as the rain shoots down I remember the many lives
that I wasted while running through the forest of severed branches.
The suicide clock without hands moans like an animal
stripped of its meat, lying by the side of the road.
Help me, I think to myself, as I sit by the window, the window
that looks out onto the frozen lake in which a man with my face
is half submerged, unable to move a muscle.
And as I try to remember how my mind and body
arrived at this moment, a thousand years have passed me by
in the blink of an eye.
Appeared in Ephemeral Literary Review, early 2023
Wondering
You can’t always bless what kills. . .
“Why not?” asked the aardvark of the canary.
And just as the clock struck 7 the window opened
and the rain came pouring in, while I prayed it wouldn’t
reach me in the tub, give me such shivers that I’d die
before I got to the towels on the shelf.
And with that I returned to my internal muttering
only to remember the time my neighbor banged on the door
while I was bathing. “Let me in!” she yelled,
“I haven’t a single lump of sugar and it’s my last cup of coffee!”
“Mother isn’t here!” I shouted back, and eventually she went away.
I rose from the tub, shook myself dry, and listened to the rain,
wondering if I’d make it through another day. . .
Appeared in Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2022
Making the Most of It
The beating stone called to me. Its voice like a dynamic pineapple
sailing through the ears of incendiary calliopes.
Then the phone rang, and someone said the gas and lights would be
turned off. So I responded, “Go ahead, you son of a defrocked satyr.
I don’t care what anyone says or does to me anymore!”
From there I walked to a restaurant where a swan took my name,
informing me it would only be three days before I got a table, but there
was an excellent chance that they’d run out of sauerkraut.
“Run out of sauerkraut!” I shouted at the swan. “You go back and tell
the cook to save me some; that I come from a long line of kings and queens;
that I could turn this place into the pet shop from hell!”
“No problem, sir!” said the swan.
Heading home, I noticed that people were falling dead in the street and
that many looked like my old boss who I hated, who I thought had died
at least 10 years earlier from a loss of blood.
“Oh well!” I said to myself, walking around the bodies. “If that’s how it is,
I’ll just have to make the most of it!”
Appeared in Tigershark, late 2020
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. He's published five chapbooks, and his writing has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies, more recently in A Sufferer's Digest, Ranger, Sein Und Werden, The Raven's Perch,The Opiate, Corvus, and many others…
