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Second Place Winner:
M E Powell
Spontaneous Combustion
It's human conductivity that worries me
Not so much the strobe flash or the deep rumbling echoes in my chest sheet
lightning
along the footpath not the sepia red overhang of clouds that should be
sunset not even
the roiling wind that suddenly tears the hair from my shoulders to curl around
my face
None of that no what worries me is how efficient the human body might be at
conducting electricity because the man into whose path I walk like deer to
headlights has
to be six feet tall his shoulders taper down to his waist and that imposing
arrogant
swagger just him and me in this gathering storm when I remember a story about
a
woman so afraid of spontaneous combustion she lived years in a bathtub can't you
just
see the bubbles and steam rising but how safe would it be in a lightning storm
Hey this is wifeland buster even if you left your ring at home you wouldn't be
on this
path if you didn't have one and probably a brace of kids just look at you
around here it's
the women who stay and the men who stray man's home is his castle and all that
but the
village is closed tight no entry tonight no matter the sway of those slimjeaned
hips it's
obvious you exercise
If it wasn't for this storm I might ask does that static raise the fine hairs
under your open
jacket and by the way are they sable like your hair or silvered like that thatch
at your
temple the hairs along your arm I mean I'm trying not to look anywhere else in
case of a
sudden lightning strike that might spark the aching need spread along the fine
hairs
spill off the path into the warm wet grass fill the pit of wanting until we
disappear in a
little pile of ash
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