The silk sounds of wind brush against the microphone.
The world outside is a monochrome square.
Shades of gray. Distant whispers.
Smell of old coffee.
Inside the stone cocoon is mostly silence. Some murmuring.
Man in polo shirt and khakis
double-checks his figures and strikes a key.
Necks crane as avidly
as they did in the beer-soaked bar last Superbowl.
Earth explodes in a pillar of fire and smoke
rising, looms outwards,
spreads across the sky
like a ceiling of storms.
Shrieks from the microphone hastily modulated-feedback
electronic agony
at the roar.
Later, it is noted
that dirt became glass and splintered,
that neither leaves nor skeletons of trees remain
except as shadows on the wasteland floor,
that the wind rustles anxiously,
skittering debris across the scarred landscape
like a neurotic cat obsessed with a bit of cellophane.
A bigger bang than before.
The man in khakis leans back and gazes fondly
at a Polaroid of his kids.
This page copyright to Sarah Morehouse, January 15, 2000.