Fiction   Essays   Poetry  The Ten On Baseball Chapbooks In Memory






Alan Britt



Crows in Long Black Raincoats

Hiding behind a tree,
Lucifer, in all his red and black bravado,
can’t find me.

That’s because
he’s the one
hiding.

I disrobed long ago,
and began smoking
Cuban cigars
when they were on the endangered list.

But Lucifer,
in his tuxedo,
and senatorial sandals,
reveals
the coward he really is.

He offers himself
to every widow
who dares
to waltz
beyond the neon fingernails
of her existence.

I emerge
as a 6½ pound
brown and white terrier mix,
treating Lucifer’s shins
like freshly-seasoned,
Kansas City barbequed ribs.

Insulted, he retreats
into darkness
like a common bat.

I take up residence
in my new cave
of wisdom.





Sunday Dusk

Two white butterflies waltz
above cucumber vines
that curl their jellyfish stringers
around faded, split-rail posts
rising
through the Sunday dusk.

In a mating ritual,
in a language
of omniscience
required
for the month of July,
these two white butterflies
slide, swirl
and tango
with the urgency
of a hungry cuttlefish
about to devour
an unsuspecting, blue-striped
shimmering sardine.




©2010 by Alan Britt

Alan Britt’s recent books are Hurricane (2010), Greatest Hits (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998), and Bodies of Lightning (1995). His work also appears in the new anthologies American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bilingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets.

Politically speaking Alan has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the U.S. should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources, including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds, and oil. He is quite fond of animals, both wild and domestic, and supports prosecuting animal abusers to the fullest extent of the law and then some. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University, and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise, and two formerly feral cats.


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