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Bad Poets Society

by James Aquilone

Kilgore Birch never thought a bowl of thin pea soup would be his undoing, especially since he stole it from a blind vicar, but here he was in the poet-king’s dungeon.

He still wasn’t sure how the vicar had identified him. Kilgore wondered if he smelled guilty.

His wife, Martha, was always harping on him to stop breaking the law and get an “honest job.” But honest jobs were still jobs, and Kilgore treasured his sleep more than his integrity.

Of course dungeons weren’t great places to catch up on one’s sleep. And as dungeons went, this one was particularly dungeon-y: full of oily shadows, moist stone walls, and anguished cries. The worst part, though, was the food; namely, the fact that there wasn’t any.

But when the guards came for Kilgore, his thoughts weren’t on food but poetry. They were the kind of thoughts one has just before one starts talking gibberish and foaming at the mouth.
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