Published on: 6/30/2015
Smartass

""Don't be a smartass,"
He pauses a moment, weighing various profundities
"Be a dumbass."
My father,
Right.

We'd finished cutting the standing dead
piled their corpses into rows of Os and os.
He lifted chains into the trailer
the bungee unnoticed, stretched taut.
It sprang into his testicles.

his face a ghost
the forest absolutely silent

I thought he was dead.

He wasn't.
Wisdom hedges its bets
I suppose.