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Bryan Rickert

Plausible Deniability

I may or may not have a relative who was in the army. He may or may not have been part of a team that drove a semi truck carrying a nuclear missile. Stopping at designated spots, this team may or may not have used GPS technology to target a primary, secondary, and tertiary target inside of the USSR.

One autumn evening, this truck may or may not have accidentally skidded from the road, and rolled several hundred feet down the side of a mountain. Unceremoniously ejecting its nuclear payload for everyone to see. The relative in question may or may not have used his personal camera to take a picture. Which, of course, was completely unauthorized.

After not believing another one of his crazy Army stories, I may or may not have been shown this photograph.

campfire light
the constant shift
of shadows

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Bryan Rickert lives in Belleville, Illinois. He is the editor at The Living Senryu Anthology. His first book of haiku, Fish Kite, is available through Cyberwit Publishing.