the provincial town is littered with death.
smoke swirls like the split ends
of cotton candy, the coal black kind.
McCarry & Camus, volunteering
now for a given resistance,
drag bodies into a gymnasium to be sorted,
stacked & burned by the truck load.
a cigarette, soggy but burning, hangs from
McCarry's rather thin, etched bottom lip.
you're right, says Camus in an
unremarkable manner, it is hot.
McCarry nods, pulls a pretty corpse by her arms.
he sets her down, puffs at his cigarette, flicks
it onto the sidewalk,
an outstandingly clean little segment.
reminds one of Oran, no? he asks.
Camus thinks about this for too long.
a trivial individual coughs from somewhere.
are you speaking of Algeria, asks Camus,
or Missouri?
©
—poet, husband, father, Texas Longhorn, gemini & gemini—is meticulously documenting the poker-faced adventures of Camus and McCarry.
We’ve published five other pieces by McBrearty: “the dentists,” “a relaxed state,” “the consumers,” “fishing,” and “A Tenuous Train Ride.”
