Everyone in our town believes in the war. Mobs in other towns are angry at the way the wind blows. Us? We get along just fine, bending like bamboo in a Hurricane. So very Zen.
The woman on the news station reminds us how to dress in the morning. Casual, comfortable, sky blue, lavender, daisy yellow. The next day the newswoman reports the war is over. Soldiers, the newswoman said, were honored with ribbons and an all-expense paid vacation to Disneyworld. The old men in our town say that war is a video game.
The next day the newswoman reports that fighting broke out, as if war were a rash along some border of two countries, as if two countries were two lovers who had a quarrel. And we suppose that would be an appropriate analogy—two lovers, rageful, envious.
The newswoman tells us to bring our recyclables to the nearest grocery store, all proceeds will go to help buy injured soldiers an all-expense paid vacation to Disneyworld. The newswoman says the soldiers’ new prosthetics are hardly noticeable. We marvel at the wonders of medical science. Men in black overalls install video cameras all over town. We’re thankful we live in a safe town, that our lovers don’t own guns, and that as far as we know, no one in our town has ever had a strange ailment or skin rash.
Sean Mclain Brown is an active member of Maxine Hong Kingston's Veterans Writing Workshop featured on Bill Moyer's Journal teaches writing at De Anza College and Western Connecticut State University.
His poetry and fiction have appeared or is forthcoming in EM, Big Ugly Review, First Intensity, Fourteen Hills, Indiana Review, LUNA, and Mobius magazines. His first book, Manufacturer's Specifications and Guidelines, is forthcoming from Blue Barnhouse Publishing. Author website.