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KEITH WOOD
ADVANCEMENT OF THE SPECIES I wait for Darwin and man to be reconciled while sitting through 20 second CNN blurbs about how a father in Tallahassee, Florida has brutally raped his 9 year old daughter and now wants to cop an insanity plea. It’s another spoonful of dead dry flies I have to swallow. I’m told the answer is building more prisons to swallow up the unfortunate byproducts of a poor gene pool. I’m told the fault is shitty parents with dangerously unbalanced chemicals that have been allowed to go unchecked for years and years. Some go on about the sins of modern society, about the crime of micro managing job, family, sanity. But lately I’ve been wondering If evolution might be the cruelest trick of all. GIVE AND TAKE Three Chinese girls are huddled in a doorway. So still, so very quiet and attentive, I can't help but smile. Their faces are ivory. Their eyes do not blink as they look to the sky, which is a bruised wash of pink and grey. Rain is coming. It's hurricane season and we've gotten lucky so far. I walk past closed windows, drawn blinds, closely mown lawns, polished automobiles. It's all a front. I learned this a long time ago. I hear muffled screams, shouts from close by. A man's arm is raised behind fluttering Venetian slits in an act of defiance and fury. It's give and take anywhere you go. OUT I'm on my way out of town, hurting, pretty goddamned low, her parting words hot nails driven into my chest. It's been over for a while now, a slow routine of pretend affection day in, day out. It's nobody's fault and we both know all the king’s horses and all the king’s men don't stand a fucking chance. Keith Wood lives and works in Philadelphia, but is originally from Columbus, Mississippi. He has had work published in Negative Capability and The Dilettante. He has written a slew of poetry, a collection of short stories, and 2 books (as yet unpublished). And yes, he is still a redneck. |
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