Two Prose Poems by Brian Pilling

the daily grind

The other woman, half-crazed in a check-out line at the 7-11, yells at the clerk, “SPEAK ENGLISH!” Laughter falls out of the sky when Gloria Estefan’s “Bad Boy” plays, then fades to silence, replaced by the whirling blades of the ubiquitous news chopper following traffic onto the interstate. The camera focused on the sixth high-speed chase of the month. Within minutes it is over, spike strips flattening all four tires. Suddenly the camera jolts to the right, picking up a convertible, the other woman’s head in her lover’s lap, the car swerving left and right, slowing and picking up speed—a familiar rhythm. The chopper hovers over the golden arches, where the lovers, now famished, sit in the drive-up line, delayed by a distraught child’s grandparents who just explode like a happy meal’s wind-up toy wound too tight—their order missing its fries and the cheap plastic toy. Grandpa pulls his semi- automatic Sig Sauer on the high schooler who screwed things up. Thoughts and prayers in waiting, like wrapped-up hamburgers on warming plates.

ZAP, NORTH DAKOTA

A pimple faced teenager is rifling through boxes of books at his neighbor’s garage sale. He looks over his reading list for the upcoming school year. His neighbor, a dangerous sounding woman wearing a winter jacket with a fake fur collar and metallic copper makeup, haggles over the price of an old toaster oven. Momentarily distracted by the boy, she pulls the list from his hand. She says, “you won’t find those here,” and returns the paper while wagging her other finger. “Nothing you should be reading either, if I have anything to say about it.” He quickly stuffs the list into his back pocket. “You tell your mama I’m running for school board and I’ll be counting on her vote.”

XXX

Brian Pilling has been published in The Main Street Rag, The Berkshire Review, Down In The Dirt, The Droplet Journal, Missive Magazine, and other literary journals. His chapbook The Poet’s Struggle is published by Bottlecap Press. Brian is a recent winner in The Cape Cod Times poetry contest.

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