Anger Burns, by Gary Carter

There are those among us / sanc­ti­mo­nious pricks, soul searchers, reli­gious fanat­ics, etc. / who coun­sel that anger is bad, to be avoid­ed / but let me tell you in no uncer­tain terms that good old red-ass anger, blind fury, mad as hell is the only way to purge cer­tain feel­ings / like when that son of a bitch up the street, even after you told him to slow down, still ran over your neighbor’s dog, regard­less of whether it was in the road or not / or some bul­ly, big­ger and stronger, kicks your ass just because he can / or when you find out your wife is fuck­ing anoth­er man /

piss on that turn the oth­er cheek shit, for­give and for­get, rise above it, be a bet­ter man / nope, go fuck­ing crazy, so mad you’re cry­ing when you beat the liv­ing shit out of the bas­tard / so bat-shit red-eyed fevered that you’re in her face and want to eat her nose off / or, I guess you could jot down a few pithy phras­es, reg­is­ter your com­plaint via email, be all sophis­ti­cat­ed and French about the whole thing / I don’t know, there’s some­thing about being wronged that just brings out the con­fed­er­ate-flag-wav­ing bour­bon-crazed red­neck in me, makes me want to drink brown liquor, dri­ve fast and wax poet­ic about what a load of buck­shot will do to a man’s ass when he’s try­ing like hell to flee after you con­front­ed him about his sins /

yeah, preach­er, I could for­give him turn the oth­er cheek and let Jesus have his way with him at some point down the road / but can you hon­est­ly tell me that even in your saved by the grace of the Lamb, washed-clean soul you don’t feel the pow­er of the blood that surges through your veins when you get real­ly good and pissed off about some­thing? / remem­ber, no lying / Jesus is listening.

Based in Asheville, North Car­oli­na, Gary Carter's most recent­ly pub­lished work is Eliot’s Tale, a reverse com­ing-of-age road trip nov­el that con­tem­plates things done and left undone. His short fic­tion and poet­ry also have appeared recent­ly in Dead Mule, Burnt Bridge, Mus­ca­dine Lines, Read Short Fic­tion and Dew on the Kudzu.