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The Blood Drop
Sam's Club surveillance cameras catch a tall anxious woman as she enters and places her tapestry handbag
on a display table where t-shirts are carelessly strewn. But the cameras do not reveal that her handbag
conceals one quart of contaminated blood. She fiddles with a few specially-priced purple t-shirts-like
maybe she's interested in purchasing one-while a frail old woman, wearing silver pentagram earrings
and carrying a nearly identical tapestry handbag, very intentionally places her bag on the same
shirt table. Now the two handbags lay side-by-side.
The tall anxious woman takes careful note of the unusual pentagram earrings, then hurriedly
snatches up the frail old woman's handbag and grabs a purple XL
t-shirt from the display table. At the cashier's counter, she slides a twenty from a big fat
roll of fresh cash, stashed in her newly acquired bag. With an angelic smile, she pays for
the shirt. To make her Sam's purchase perfectly evident as she strolls nonchalantly beneath
the cameras and through the receipt checkpoint at the exit door, she loosely dangles the
purple shirt across the frail old woman's handbag. Without note, she sprints through
the parking lot where she stealthily ducks into her silver mini-van.
Moments later, the frail old woman, now possessing the tall anxious woman's handbag,
as if it had always been her own, saunters toward the exit, having acquired nothing
at all-at least not to the naked eye. But on camera, she appears as calm as flat
water, just as she'd been when she arrived-except in close-up, where the keenest
observer might notice fresh salty moisture rapidly rising among the soft hairs of her upper lip.
Spiel: There has been no influence under the politics of the NEA, and not a hint of the heavy
hand of an MFA, in the diverse writings of personal conflict and social consciousness by the poet Spiel.
He is published frequently, internationally, online and in independent press journals. His latest books
are: “she: insinuations of flesh brooding,” published by March Street Press and “once upon a farmboy,
” published by MadmanInk . Learn more about Spiel at:Web
Email: Spiel
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