Tom Barlow

ANOTHER WORLD

A fiction, after Ai

There you are in a bank lobby with a teller as hostage,
a pillowcase heavy with twenties and a sawed-off
in your right hand, while outside the gathered crowd

shouts to the marksmen to take the shot. You
raise your other hand to your forehead to see if you
can feel the heat of a laser sight and mutter

the same stupid prayer you did in grade school
when the principal chose to believe the kid
who you beat up for her licorice and he swung

his paddle like a Louisville Slugger. Back home,
the old man, working on another quart of Thunderbird,
laughed at your red ass while your mother snuffed
her Lucky Strike out on the back of your hand.

You knew even before taking the career aptitude
test in high school that disappointment would
follow you through life like a hungry dog. There

was another, better world, though, you could sense it in
the perfume of the girl who sat beside you in Civics, she
had Jimmy Choos and a thousand-dollar smile.

But she wanted nothing to do with you. Face it, even
if she had granted you entry to her world, you would
have just stolen the silver and, drunken, punched her

father and been banished in disgrace back here, a better
place for someone like you just as your mother foretold
long ago, even though the bullet is on its way now.

Before it hits, you have an instant in which to dodge,
but all you do is close your eyes and wait for that sweet release.


Tom's YouTube video reading of "Another World":



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Tom confesses: "There was this guy in grade school, let's call him Ezra, and he didn't give a damn for any schoolwork but he did rule the playground and he was a head taller than anyone so we elected him class president. I think I knew even then that this would be the highlight of his life; there were hoodlums all around us and they were just waiting to invite him into the gang. But I knew that comeuppance was a long time away for him, and I would have been glad to walk in his shoes right up to the moment things turned ugly. At least, I thought so back then. Now, not so much."

TOM BARLOW is an Ohio writer whose work has appeared in journals including The Stoneboat Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, Harbinger Asylum, Heron Clan, The Remington Review, Your Daily Poem, and many more. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.