Heads or tails
Heads the macaque locks herself in a fig tree to rear her chick. Tails you lock yourself in the fig tree and rear her chick Heads you wrap yourself in a coca leaf. Tails the Incan who gave it to you is sickened by mercury in a silver mine. Heads the morning sun bullies you across the porch. Tails the hurricane's feeder bands block the brightness. Heads you are driving away from a hurricane through a dismal swamp. Tails you pull off the highway to buy fireworks and get a flat tire. Heads the North Koreans lob a great big bomb at Guam. Tails you throw darts at a large orange melon. Heads the macaque's chick escapes the tree, and you can't find her. Tails you catch up with her but can't convince her to come home. Heads she is arrested and handcuffed at Theodora Park. Tails she leaves the park an hour before the police arrived. Heads she is on a hunger strike in a clean, well-lit jail cell. Tails she is popping popcorn in a microwave in a motel suite. Heads the macaque won't let you back in the tree to get your stuff. Tails you fly away to Guam and live in a fig tree. Heads the storm hits at high tide and overflows the seawalls. Tails it's only wind that blows one of your screens off. Heads your mother-in-law threatens to jump off her sixteenth-floor balcony. Tails the hurricane shutters are still closed, thwarting her.
Ed Gold has a chapbook, Owl, and poems in the Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Passager, Think, New York Quarterly, Kakalak, Window Cat Press, Kansas Quarterly, Cyclamens and Swords, Poet Lore, Rat’s Ass Review, Homonym Journal, and many others. For 15 years, he taught at the University of Maryland and now is a writer, editor, and writing trainer for various government agencies and large corporations. For the Poetry Society of South Carolina, he runs the Skylark contest for high school poets. Ed lives in Charleston with his wife, Amy Robinson, and their terrier, Edie.
The Petigru Review 