AMY BRAZILLER

PROPHECY

I’ve never seen so many people reading in the streets. Skyward hands, a supplication to the word, images on text, screened in. It was after the television became a recited haiku, a patterned rhythm spitting memories and used tunes.

He said it wasn’t always that way. He said sometimes the owl watched. Witnesses.

It had no soundtrack. A quaking silence, some said. Others referenced apocalypse. End times. Stored memories in earth barrels. Food for later.

His books predicted. An omen, not consciously sought. A crystal ball glance looking forward to see beyond the stars, through the stars. A constellation foretells a happening. An owl hoots prophetically toward death. Nobody saw it coming. Dead birds falling from the sky. A ghost hanging on the edge of a raven. Perspective. A point of view into that which has not happened. Things to come. Destiny. A bad rap.

He said to stay in the past. A look into the rear view mirror revealed what was.  A man walked on the moon. A tsunami swallowed hundreds of thousands. Lives fractured.  People fell from the sky. They bought homes, had babies, watched and listened. A chronicle of stories. Details long ago. Yesterday. Just before now.

Some called him a harbinger. A teller of tales, told and retold. A repetition of events that last longer than the event, misremembered. History. That’s what their books said.

Amy Braziller is a former punk rocker, sometimes banjo twanging foodie, and current Professor of English at Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, CO. Publications include Hippocampus, Entropy, Crack The Spine, and Punchnel's. She blogs about food, film, music, GLBT issues, and social media distractions at amybraziller.com.