That Day in February

by Brett Rutherford

Pink cards arrived
with little hearts
and arrows.

Tomorrow
the senders come
to claim their victory.
peer over the edge
of an operating
theater, as I
am dissected
by tiny, long,
feather-fledged
scalpels.

Pink cards arrive
like individual hornets.
The hive follows,
an angry cloud
in which I sink,
a million stings
of insincere
affection.

I run. They fall
like meteors,
my fast feet trailed
by flaming craters.
Some cave
I crave
until the mail truck
is out of sight.

Unsent, the letter
I most require,
and dead its sender.
Unsent, another
from one who has quite
forgotten me.

Valentine's Day

by Brett Rutherford

The answer to everything
seems to be shooting.

Arrows in hearts
have brought me nothing
but misery. Worse yet
for poor Sebastian,
The Saint of Love
as it is actually
practiced.

Pink is a passing

hue, the moment before
the blood spurts out.

Deer dead,
air bags pierced,
substations shattered,
balloons plummeting,
lost kites targeted
by Tomahawk missiles;

even Eros, if he flew
to bring me good
tidings, is doomed,
a downed mallard
locked in the jaw
of a drooling hound.

Love is a bullet.
The grizzle-bearded
hunter rules the day.
Will you be my —
Splat.