END (TIMES) GAME

Two guys two tables over at Pancho’s
are talking between bites about basketball 
and the Last Days, 

mercury in vaccines and quicksilver
point guards, 

and though they just met five minutes ago,
you can tell they’ve been reading 
from the same playbook for years. 

You can see it in their nods, quick and sure,
even before the other has finished his discourse
on this year’s likely MVP 

or microchips hidden in vaccines,
just waiting to be slipped
under the skin of the deceived.

         One World Government. 
         World War III. 
         It’s all comin’, bro,

the shorter one says, strong in the same
calm faith that washes over you when
Westbrook’s just about to blow by his man
from the top of the key. 

Quick to the hoop, off the glass, ICBMs falling
like long threes. 

They calculate. It is the number of a man, 
and that number is a triple-double.

         Even so, come, 
they pray, and reach for
another cup of the avocado salsa.

Steve Brisendine – writer, poet, occasional artist, recovering journalist – lives and works in Mission, Kansas. His most recent collections are Salt Holds No Secret But This (Spartan Press, 2022) and To Dance with Cassiopeia and Die (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), a “collaboration” with his former pen name of Stephen Clay Dearborn. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Flint Hills Review, Connecticut River Reviewand other journals and anthologies. Write to him at steve.brisendine@live.com.