Antonius Block is back, vexed,
wishing only for more war,
more murder. It makes more sense.
One cannot gut the wind
much as one might want to.
All there is now is the game,
the opponent he cannot quite beat
because it hides in the human heart.
So he slams his fists on the board
and spirits the revenant gone.
Then Jöns approaches,
asks who that fellow was,
and duly turns and skips away,
masticating wild strawberries
before Block even answers.
Carson Pytell is a Pushcart nominated writer living outside Albany, NY whose work has appeared in numerous venues online and in print, including Artifact Nouveau, Perceptions Magazine, NoD Magazine, Rabid Oak and White Wall Review, among others. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Coastal Shelf, and his short collection, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and chapbook, Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020) are now available. In December 2020 he participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.
Twitter: @CPytell93
Instagram: @carsonpytell