Leash
The leash of red foxes scampered from the community garden and crossed the paved bike path into the low-hanging forsythia along the riverbank. The foxes didn’t even notice the stag beetle making its way to the garden across the blacktopped path, but the last fox had upended the beetle, which now lay on its back looking into the heavens.
The beetle treaded air and screamed into the void, “INSECURITY PROBLEMS????”
Biggie
The worm crawled through the earth and the darkness and the disgusting grubs that sometimes got in its way on their own beautiful way to flight and broke through into the light of day.
The worm was listening to Biggie.
“Fuck,” said the worm. “I’ve made all the wrong friends.”
Cronyism
The group of white-tailed deer met beside an abandoned gob pile in what was once a hand-over-fist money making operation before cheap natural gas, electricity, and natural floods destroyed the market for coal.
“Cronyism,” said the matriarch of the group. “Let’s burn it all fucking down.”
Bram Riddlebarger writes, plays music, and lives in SE Ohio.