Given the Chance
Jeffrey Zable
There is a chance that if I went into the kitchen for some juice
at the moment there could be a mad sniper sitting in the tree
outside the window who has a bullet with my name on it.
Other than that, before my wife left for work, she told me to get
a haircut, which I soon realized could result in my losing an eye
if my barber was not concentrating on her clippers because she
was upset over a fight with her husband that included threats
of divorce.
And given that I’m so used to having both eyes, I’ve decided to just
stay in bed and practice sniffling and coughing so that when my wife
returns it will look as if I wasn’t feeling well enough to do anything
but stay home and rest.
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. He's published five chapbooks, and his writing has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies, more recently in Sufferer's Digest, Ranger, Sein Und Werden, Midsummer Dream House, Red Eft, and many others.