from my unpublished collection
Someone made a video of it, the bystanders laughing. The man keeps covering his head, keeps getting hit. Like seagulls pecking at a wounded owl, the owl sick and astonished. Now and then it flops away, gets surrounded. A wave knocks it down. The sand whips it back. How he got in this predicament, that part’s off camera, we’ll never know. He’s obviously far from home, doesn’t know the rules. They surround it, emboldened. He doesn’t seem to understand that they’re not going to stop. They’re going to post it on YouTube. They’re going to brag about it, relish it.
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First published in Poetry Northwest
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images and text © by Alpay Ulku
