“You know,”
Tony said with a smile,
“they’d like
to vent volcanoes.”
“Drill into them
to relieve the pressure—
imagine
gas escaping.
like steam
from a giant’s teakettle.”
We were drinking coffee
at the counter of Abe’s
on Bristol Street.
Two eggs up, bacon,
and a toasted bagel.
Tony had given up
on the bagel.
He was missing
two front teeth
and his face looked like
he had lost an argument
with a Mixmaster.
He was tall and dark
with a laugh as contagious
as measles.
But somewhere,
in the tangled machinery
above his eyes
he had a screw loose,
and out of the blue
he would blow.
Then, for a few
frantic minutes,
Tony was a human
wrecking ball.
Last night,
he had hunkered
out of the way
as his ex parked
her dad’s car,
then he took a baseball bat to it—
sweating and swearing,
he shattered
windshields and lights.
The dad and two friends
caught up with him later,
as he walked home alone.
“They will kill you,”
offered Abe,
“If you keep
that crap up.”
“Sooner or later,”
I thought.
Everyone did.
“But the drilling
is more than likely
to set it off,”
Tony said,
squeezing his napkin
into a quarter inch ball.
“The eruption,
that is” he said,
sweeping his
meaty hands
up over his head
to show
how the volcano,
when tampered with,
would blow.
Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble, New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His chapbook, Perhaps You Can, will be published in 2019 by Kelsay Press.