Last Call for Buzz Nettle
by Chris McCartney

COCOONED in Portland Police SWAT gear, I regripped my MP5 submachine gun and commenced the kid in a snowsuit waddle across the rear parking lot. Fubar this and I’d probably urban legend the security guard in addition to destroying my career. I had a hunch he’d be outside the mall, as far from the kill zone as he could get.
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It had been a quiet afternoon, the kind where the sun shines and holidaymakers spend most of the day lazing on the beach. A waiter looked at the clock on the wall again: in an hour and a half he’d only served a pot of tea, to a table of old women in floral print dresses. In croaky tones they’d gossiped, and wafted themselves with dog-eared magazines, complaining about the heat.

you, again
             thousa
                          ndfold

you, again
             thousa
                          ndfold

the many you
the ever you
we have not met like this before.

and you are
             you, again
                          thousa
                                       ndfold.

Think of me as a tree. Imagine that. Me! A tree. But not just a tree, a human tree. A tree that extends its branches to to you, a fellow human and tree, joined by humanitree.

Remember I want to hug you with branches that act as arms. My skin is like bark but pink and fleshy like skin, with an amber hue in places reminding you of both human skin’s callouses and a tree’s coarse bark.

Why are you freaked out by my trunk painted blue to look like a t-shirt, and then red painted below that to look like shorts. I’m like a little boy who is totally cool but I remain, too, a tree. Combined. To love as a tree will. To show mercy as a boy will.