Headline News
It starts the way these things so often do:
a headline scrolls and you cough, “What the hell?”
before you realize, yes, it must be true:
The Squirrel Army has done rather well.
The world is mad, but not like madmen thought.
It’s not the end. Just odd. The sausages
spill into traffic. Stealing boats does not
require you to wear pants at all. It is
the quiet, human, minor, screwy volta
that turns the news to poetry. A wheeze
in fate’s machinery. The things that jolt a
mind’s lines into enjambment. It’s the breeze
blowing the headlines off their daily shelf
to whisper: “Life is weirder than itself.”
A.Z. Foreman
is a linguist, poet, short story author and/or translator pursuing a doctorate at the Ohio State University. His work has been featured in the Threepenny Review, Rattle, ANMLY, Poet Lore and elsewhere, including two people’s tattoos but not yet the Starfleet Academy Quarterly or Tattooine Monthly. He writes from the edge of thought between sleep and waking. He wants to pet your dog.