Nathan Kotecki - The Suburban Strange

This level reach of blue is not my sea;

Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,

Whose quiet ripples meet obediently

A marked and measured line, one after one.

This is no sea of mine, that humbly laves

Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm.

I have a need of wilder, crueler waves;

They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.

So let a love beat over me again,

Loosing its million desperate breakers wide;

Sudden and terrible to rise and wane;

Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide

That casts upon the heart, as it recedes,

Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.

The voice of God, or a saint, or a demon - who could tell - thundered across the cavernous waiting room in heaven, calling his name, reciting his many sins, and banishing him with a final shout, so he was blown out the doors and sent hurtling through space until he crashed down in the middle of the rubble of his house. Everything was a blur, but he remembered an explosion and thought of the shady men whose money he’d taken at the gambling table the night before, who’d promised revenge as they slinked away. It was Halloween, and the man’s friends were surely at the party, unaware of his death, probably wondering where he was. His body was horribly disfigured, so he stole a sheet off a laundry line, cut two holes for eyes, and made his way to the party, thinking of every time he’d stacked a deck, every time he’d stolen a pot. Now he silently took his place at the gambling table, nodding at the vampire, the zombie, the nurse, and the cowboy, hoping to pay every debt by midnight and try his hand at heaven again.