A truck carrying inflated beach balls just skidded off I-95 near Roanoke and now the beach balls, probably hundreds are dotting the highway causing pileups, quite a few flying up into trees like giant air-filled jelly beans and there's such a state of joy among the flocks of red-winged blackbirds and cats are chasing dogs for a change into the median, dogs that always wanted but never had the courage to enter and those surviving the chase are relieving themselves like never before and me, I'm just lying here in the sand listening to the radio, looking at the sun through my eyelids, waiting for some big new world to come out of nowhere and bounce off my head.


Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published in over sixty journals including the Cincinnati Review, Faultline, Windsor Review, Packingtown Review, Gertrude and Passager. His collection of poems entitled Juice is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing. He writes from Pennsylvania.