A Poem: The News

Fifty percent of our marriages ended in stalemate, the rest in restaurants.We all tested above average as drivers, a phenomenon known online for its leap the median meme.A pie-chart infographic show cased pie shortfalls with an empty piece bigger than six o’clock.On what remained of Main Street, the most popular building types were brutal and Beirut.Behind our poor investments hid the Swiss, according to sources who slurred precision into a slur.More people trained as mountain men and women than financiers and lawyers, whose numbers we had financed longer than the law allowed.The trend where workers threw them selves in front of a bullet train shocked the stock market.In a survey, area hospitals estimated railroad-related fatalities at a hundred possibilities from none to untracked.The top tactic to cope with sorrow started with cans of chocolate frosting.Nine out of ten dentists were identified by dental records.The tenth dentist was identified by investigators as a person of interest and an alleged pediatric practitioner.If we took the black medicine, nothing bad would happen.If we flipped the black switch to obey, something bad would happen to a stranger in a separate room. In mirrors, ECNALUBMA became danger. One cure for our hunger required a runaway dump truck.After the break, the Indians won and thunderstorms were coming. 

Steven D. Schroeder’s second book, “The Royal Nonesuch” (Spark Wheel Press), won the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University. His poetry is available or forthcoming from “New England Review,” “Crazyhorse,” “Pleiades” and “Michigan Quarterly Review.” He lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.Photo by Attilio D'Agostino. Selected by the Editors of River Styx Literary Magazine.