Humans in white shorts
are vulnerable
yet strangely aggressive.
What with their bare-legged dexterity,
if you’re a bug
there’s nowhere to hide.
The hand is mightier
than a horse’s tail,
or hind claw
hacking a basset hound’s floppy ear.
Humans plan social events
requiring white shorts.
They enjoy Cricket, yachting expeditions,
Wimbledon and every shopping mall
with an artificial waterfall,
to name four.
Throw in a few corpses
attending family reunions
with summer softball games
and you have
quite a mess
on your hands.
I’m telling you,
if you laid all those
white shorts
end to end,
you could encircle
the earth forever!
Alan Britt’s recent books are Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin: 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008.
