Buffalo Parade

The brown, mangy forelock and beard of the drum major serves as a baton for the rest of the herd despite being littered with straw. He marches forward without waiting for his retinue to follow. Their accordance is coded in.

The troop rushes forward like a flood of molasses, slow at every moment, but before we know it, we're drowning in buffalo, breathing in their musk. They pretend to ignore us as we snap photos and move as far too close. They seem more like comfortable bedding than a physical threat.

Neither group understands the true danger it is in.

A Clouded Sky Is Preferred

What kind of clouds do you like most, I asked, and he said definitely horsetail cirrus and then he said no cloud is like another and that’s when I told him what Judy said about zebras, that no two are the same; that each is as unique as a fingerprint and the young memorize their mother’s pattern to find them in the herd or running along the ancient migration where they hang out with wildebeests because zebras have keen eyes and wildebeests have keen noses and zebras eat long grass and wildebeests eat short. I like tall thunderheads, I said.

From Guest Contributor Jeanie Tomasko

Cabral

Immediately after he was stripped of his chevrons, Cabral ripped off his shirt, stepped out of his pants, turned, and ran. He hurdled the low stone wall, graceful as he could manage. Moments later, shot at but only nicked on the hip, he lay face down in the coop surrounded by surprised hens and their bolder cocks. He crawled, stopped, caught his breath, inhaled the scent of shavings and other leavings. Not far away he heard the bleating of the small disparate herd. “Why,” he later almost told his captors, “Why didn’t I seek the goats? That’s where I belong.”

From Guest Contributor Clyde Liffey