Eye Of The Beholder by Brian Rihlmann

sitting in a strange bar
in a strange town
in Oregon someplace 
nicely buzzed 
my tongue loosened
and chatting it up
with the locals
and somehow the conversation turns
to nuclear weapons 
and I remark how beautiful 
a mushroom cloud 
truly is—
that glorious fireball
rising like a flaming erection 
into the atmosphere 
and boy—
does he take offense to that!
That’s fucked up, man...
you’re fucked up!
he’s drunk and so
it’s useless to explain 
I’m speaking in purely 
aesthetic terms
and that I’m well aware
of the horrors 
of the A-Bomb—
after all...
I DID read Hiroshima 
in Jr. High....
but he goes on 
berating me until finally
I say—Fuck you and fuck this
and I walk out into the night
and drunk drive
back to my campsite 
down an unmarked dirt road 
I start a fire and sit 
watching its beautiful flames dance 
as no mortal man or woman 
ever could 

 

Brian Rihlmann lives in Reno, Nevada. His work has appeared in many magazines, including The Rye Whiskey Review, Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal Of Poetry, and New York Quarterly. He has authored three collections of poetry, most recently “A Screaming Place,” (2021) by Cajun Mutt Press.