Ban this (an early* Hallowe’en trick-or-treat not-so-goodie, ooooops)
Ban me ban you ban he she it, they them theirs
Ban this ban those ban it, its, it’s
Ban been a while since we learnt how to read
And used well enough, do any “good”
All this season, turkey gobble, close game on the tube
Spookin thought we gone ‘n’ grown too cool for times grown long (no one notice:
Think speed want slow us down to no? Silence the noooo-eeease in your, my heeed?)
While your heart will one day boot skoot ‘n’ dribble
The ball I fubble with buddle with cuddle with now
These letters formed in my head wanting voice for another clumsy thumb
of lowly text, mine now back to yours, our ours…
Veto? Enjoin? Embargo? Debar. Debate?
Prescribe? Proscribe? Antescribe. Suppress the stop
Of time’s click but wordsbedamned the ban
Need no page of ink or Guten
Harbor no byte of white screen’s light
To speak far better, that hour, after silenced by hate?
Give a listen. A read. A civilized word to the would: Called calm.
Calling once more, sane sound, shared world, reason’s
Reckoning full heard or half beat measured its breath
Ban not lest you, we both be banned, by then be damned “for good“
*Or belated. Update this keyword as needed. Reuse every year, month, season as necessary. And Until. …and thank you for every time. Also please see https://bannedbooksweek.org/. Scary huh, this long past the season we thought gone and done?
We had no sidewalks, April
We had no sidewalks where I grew up, us country folk for sure, you see.
Now having lived more of my life in cities with paved walking paths (and traffic, God the awful God traffic, the rain makes ’em speed up! I swear)…
I wonder if I better understand a saunter’s stroll
without the trees’ debris to
cushion.
I was on my way to the dentist that chilly day, no longer masks common in these crowded–, with what I realized, I had my finger stuck in my mouth. What virus now lurking in my sinuses on my way to lungs and brain, to ruin. When someone sneezed. Not the homeless on every corner the last few days most try to ignore, but from a nose I recognized back before city’s life’s fears could not be fixed with a spin around the block.
Alone.
She hugged me, tugged at my neck, fritted over my stained collar always flopping wrong, and
reached for my hand, which by then was already back
in my pocket. It was March in Atlanta, and the Gulf’s whisper fading south that late-morning winter, not yet spring–
“Where’s your hat?” April said to her baldly, me. Boldly.
“I didn’t know it would be so–“
“All’s to know come March (not April), unpredictable, latest front across the country swept right down this time, no match that Florida stench,” she was Southern, prone to long-windedness and never not just about the weather. She had pretty, straight teeth. Said well water the trick.
R.P. Singletary | A rural native of the Southeastern United States, R. P. Singletary is a lifelong writer across fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms; a budding playwright; and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, with recent fiction, poetry, and drama published or forthcoming in Literally Stories, Litro, BULL, Rathalla Review, The Rumen, Wasteland Review, EBB – Ukraine, Wicked Gay Ways, Screen Door Review, Bending Genres, Pink Disco, The Ana, and elsewhere.
Websites:
https://newplayexchange.org/users/78683/r-p-singletary
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/r_p_singletary
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