Friendly Fire

by Carter Ratcliff

Those who learned to play checkers
as children played checkers throughout their lives
and they were the great majority.

Then majorities were redefined.
Even the sky was gerrymandered.

Everyone now plays chess.
Gambits proliferate
and we have nothing to love
but love itself.  Sleep

is hectic.  Investigations
of recent incidents have implicated,
so far, only stalwarts of the disloyal
opposition, shadows

as elusive as you
would suspect and
heavily armed.  Or so we
further suspect.

Evading ourselves, we say
this is coalition politics
as usual.

Friendly fire,
enemy smoke
and mirrors
of unknown provenance.