Sleetmagazine.com

Volume 14 • Number 2 • Fall-Winter 2022-2023

Charles Springer

Believing

October, and all over the neighborhood moms and dads are draining their kids' kiddy pools, rolling and tying them up and carrying them to the garages to store until next spring. Overnight they've completely forgotten what they've done and when they wake up in the morning, even before their first cups of coffee, they look out of their windows, then phone the local authorities to report either something quite sizeable had landed overnight in their yards and left an impression or someone or something has been up to crop circling again. In all instances the kids try to explain to their moms and dads, even lead them by the hands to garages to show them the rolled up plastic pools. It's only when the kids finally confess to being extraterrestrials themselves that the moms and dads believe them, promise them anything their little hearts and huge heads desire.

Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter. A Pushcart Prize, Sonder Press Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and Best of the Net nominee, he is widely published in print and online. He has authored Juice (Regal House Publishing, 2018) and a collection of prose poems, Nowhere Now Here (Radial Books, 2021). A new collection of prose poems, Window Over the Sink (Fernwood Press) is slated for Fall 2023. https://www.charlesspringer.com.