Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, what were you doing the day that touched off WWI? Didn’t you know that bad things happen in the Empire’s hinterlands? I like your hats, like the plumage, but sorry, it is difficult to reconcile hats and violence. These are troubling times, 100 years still. That’s a math problem you can’t solve with hats. Did they disassemble your hats from your heads when you were shot?

after, disturbed birds
cried out their own prayers to
distant minarets

Michael Paul’s

work has appeared in Pure Slush, Postcard Poems and Prose, Black Heart Magazine, Lockjaw, and Right Hand Pointing. He is a member of Hi-Fi, a historical fiction writers group. He teaches English as a second language in Central Falls, Rhode Island (that’s the smallest city in the smallest state, geography-lovers), USA.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ In the Margins//minutiae, a hyper-link story in multiple parts written by several authors, including Michael Paul whose Part 7 begins, “You flip down the visor and stare at the rectangular mirror at someone.” (Lockjaw Magazine, July 2015)