Bats & Fanny Packs.

Bats & Fanny Packs
by james bezerra

What a strange world it would be
if bats and fanny packs
switched places.

Not baseball bats
or cricket bats
but rather,
actual bats.
Bats with wings and teeth and creepy fur and ultra-sonic shrieks of
bug-eating glee.
And they would be worn by
tourists from the Mid-West.
Or really,
overweight travelers of any stripe
who have important things to carry, like digital cameras or
Snickers bars.
And there the bats would hang, tight
around so many rotund waists. Their wings clipped at the smalls of our backs,
their faces facing outward, evil and angry and
snapping at children
while we wait in line for
corndogs at Knott’s Berry Farm.

But what of all
those fanny packs
set free from fannies and fronts?
They would dump their contents;
disgorge all those
lipsticks,
those old cough drops,
those ticket stubs,
all of that loose change and
those Snickers wrappers
and up and into the air they would soar.
Their unclipped waist belts
flapping and beating against
the cold night sky.
Their unzippered mouths agape and
grinning
as they shriek the shriek
that all wild things sometimes shriek:
the shriek of freedom, of danger, the shriek of the night,
the shriek of hunger and
of excitation.

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