by Adele Evershed
In the quiet of a collective breath-holding / Ladies Night / accidentally played on the radio / so an Israeli spokesman / delivered words / about exacting a price from Iran / to the throb of a disco beat
I listened to the ballistic bass / and retorting trumpets / cut with words of war / as if this was a movie / the music an ironic middle finger / to the inevitability / of the end of the world / and it seemed like another sign / in a week of medieval omen
After / the BBC made no mention of their mistake / Johnnie Walker just played the song / so we could all ignore / our electric slide / toward a bigger conflict / since Kool & The Gang / insisted everything would be alright
And if it really was 'ladies night,' that might be true / if women were in charge / drones would be used / to make sure daughters got home safely / and sons would be iron-domed / so they didn't lay down precious lives / because they belonged to one tribe / or another
Instead all we can do is watch the sky unnaturally darken and try to remember how to breathe
Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. Her poems and flash fictions have appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, Janus Lit, and many other places. Adele has been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction. She has published two poetry chapbooks, Turbulence in Small Places (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Adele has published a novella-in-flash, Wannabe (Alien Buddha Press), and a short story collection Suffer/Rage (Dark Myth Publisher).