No Time Was Sacred and We Didn’t Complain

Terminator PinBall and Smashing Pumpkins
playing on the pool-hall jukebox.
When we were 11 (where’d we get the gumption?)
we’d set a roll of quarters on the billiards; call next.
We broke into the convenience-store ice cooler;
got on the roof and threw bags of ice to watch them explode.
Ventured out with the gas we’d siphoned from the mower.
Next-door-construction-site badlands like left-out au gratins.
We’d find bones and tar.
My cousin’s dad had to give us a gasoline bath.
Rode that swamp go cart all summer like a first car.
My mother was the live-in night auditor.
We could hear the bell ding from the living room.
No time was sacred and we didn’t complain.

Michael Hammerle is pursuing his MFA at the University of Arkansas at Monticello where he teaches composition. He holds a BA in English from the University of Florida. He is the founder of Middle House Review. His fiction has been published in The Best Small Fictions 2017 selected by Amy Hempel. His prose and poetry has been published in Split Lip Magazine, New World Writing, Louisiana Literature, After the Pause, Matador Review, Drunk Monkeys, New Flash Fiction Review, BULL, Misfit Magazine, and many more magazines. He lives and writes in Gainesville, FL.