by KT Herr
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon
A woman is driving 100 miles per hour toward a brick wall. She’s slamming on the brakes, but they don’t work. Her boyfriend, in the passenger’s seat, chews gum and scrolls Instagram. In the passenger’s seat, he pumps one fist and shouts along to yacht rock. The woman is a volunteer at Habitat for Humanity. Her boyfriend is a budding ornithologist. He flips the bird everywhere he goes haha get it? The wall is a breaking point, rapidly approaching. The car is a 2002 Honda Civic with a mismatched door panel and a bumper bra. The woman is afraid for her life. The wall is afraid, too. The woman punches her boyfriend in the thigh and says do something you idiot. The boyfriend shrugs a little with both hands like, what?! All around, clouds vomit onto the littered berm. The wall holds its bricks a little tighter. The woman pulls the emergency break. The glove box explodes and a Jack-in-the-box pops out, waving limp arms. Dammit says the woman. What the fuck says the boyfriend. Vote your conscience! says the Jack-in-the-box. Fphffbbffbff says the avalanche of fast food napkins billowing out behind him. The car is un-brakable. Above it, the sky is a sick wheel of light. Under whirring tires, asphalt cackles. Don’t look says the wall to its quivering mortar. Don’t look says the spinning light. Oh god says the bumper bra. Rosanna, yeah! says the boyfriend, punching the ceiling, punching through the moonroof. Love me says the woman, but she is talking to the wall. Love me says the wall, turning to mist. Aauuugghhh says the boyfriend, as the light-wheel takes his hand at the wrist.
A revised version of “Gender study; gestalt” by KT Herr won second place in the 2025 SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest after its original publication in Ran Off With the Star Bassoon.
KT Herr (they/she) is a queer writer, stepparent, and curious person with work appearing in Foglifter, Bat City Review, The Massachusetts Review, and as winner of the 2023 American Literary Review Award in Poetry, among others. KT is a Four Way Books board member, a poetry editor at Gulf Coast Journal, and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor PhD Fellow in critical poetics at the University of Houston.