My Cardboard Balcony

The Tavern's Lights by Belinda Roddie The tavern's lights were on at three am, so I stumbled in to hear a banjo and an accordion squealing a reel in the corner, while three men drank tall pints beside the bar. The bartender was young and lithe, her red hair falling in crisp drapes across the shoulders of her uniform. I sat on the stool closest to the wall and asked if she could spare me a cider. "I have four dollars in my pocket." She nodded and passed a bottle, forgoing the glass. I said, "So you're open pretty late for a bar." She smiled, not speaking, while the musicians sang of the Emerald Isle.

Today, you were defined as a figurehead of the rebellion. You wore a plastic crown as a form of irony and directed the legions to rally against the fence with wooden pitchforks and unlit torches. You told them to burn down the churches with the heat of their eyes, and directed them to stomp their feet on the pavement hard enough as if to cause an earthquake when the king went by. You made yourself a throne from a broken toilet bowl, where you sat and read Time Magazine as the swarms shook off their exoskeletons in the cold and lunged for the throat.