SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fifteen
R. A. ALLEN
Due Process
When Cleo passed way, I hoped she'd return
as a tigress. For our hamster, rebirth as a grizzly bear.
My goldfish, an astrophysicist. The boa constrictor,
any non-invasive species. (My computer died,
but I needed an upgrade anyway.)
With Flopsy clenched in his slavering jaws, the next-door
Doberman fled my yard only to get zotzed by a DHL van.
So, whether you ascribe to the tenants of karma,
or merely empathize with grieving bitterness,
his perpetual samsara should be that of a three-legged squirrel.
Cleansed of litigation, justice prevails in the world to come.
Personally, I'm hoping to rise peacefully above my mortal
remains—same as a soap bubble—gazing back down upon myself
like in all those accounts of near-death experiences you see
on TV. Rising, rising, saying goodbye, and then... pop.
R. A. Allen lives in Memphis on the Mississippi River. He has published in The New York Quarterly, B O D Y, The Penn Review, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, Pennine Platform, Mobius, etc. His short stories appear in The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, PANK, and Best American Mystery Stories.
