Roach
By: Jonathan Briggs
Nibbled on some Alba truffle with the epicures on the Upper Eastside
haven’t you? Look at you. Your ancestors
snatched morsels of sausage off Lincoln’s beard
decorated the DOI before the Founding Fathers with your peppery feces
played loot the natives with the Separatists in P-Town.
And you
you spine-legged Kafkacreature.
You!
More American than I!
More Earthly than I!
More earthy than I!
You
meet your end
melting and drowning
in a pan
of bacon grease.
Firefly
By: Jonathan Briggs
my eyes didn’t need to adjust to the night because it was hardly dark more gray and as I saw you hovering under the silhouette of the rotting pear tree and although as I said it wasn’t dark could still only see you blinking in the same spot tried to understand you but couldn’t could only attribute my thoughts to your position and thought this firefly is communicating with me or thought maybe you thought that I was with you with my cigarette covered by my hand to protect it from the invisible drizzle but that was all bullshit we weren’t communicating but I was still certain that there must have been some reason I was there and you under that corpse pear tree blur must have had your reasons for not moving just flashing flashing flashing and I thought I was crying but it was just the rain which made me feel like a damned fool so I wiped my boots on the mat and went back inside and wrote you a poem
Dilettante & Tyro (A Series. In Conversation): A Post-Graduate Correspondence
By: Jonathan Briggs
Dear Ty,
How's life in the city? How are the women? All is not so well here. My only interaction with women is my family's distaff. And this whole graduation thing—and being unemployed—has left me impecunious, yet I lack the impoverished filigree of, say, Oscar the Grouch, or Charlie Chaplin's Tramp to make a good go at it. I am looking for one scintilla of hope that this period is transitory. My mother forestalls me in front of the bathroom everyday with the same acidulous request to talk to my uncle (the one with the white, toothbrush mustache) about becoming his vassal or something. My remonstration is nonexistent. I merely shrug and clean out my system before heading to Starbucks where I feign reading for about two hours. This brief two hours is the analgesia to my otherwise abominably banal existence.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Your friend,
Dilettante
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
Dear Dil,
Don't be so hard on yourself. Things will get better. Your florid vocabulary leads me to believe you are studying for the GRE. I hope writing the letter to me wasn't merely a studying exercise. I understand, however, if you are simply killing (excuse the cliché) two birds with one stone. You always were a multi-tasker. It's just that I don't have a dictionary on me as I write this letter, so you may have to excuse me if I missed anything. Life in the city is in some ways what I expected and others not quite. For example, yes this place is chock-full of women—big breasted blondes, flat-chested brunettes, and all cup-sizes and hair colors in between—but the women always seem to be going somewhere, meeting with someone, and ignoring me. I fall in and out of love every five seconds. Take today for example. On the subway platform, a real beauty to the right gives me a few milliseconds of eye contact and that's that. She's glanced at me and passed. No words need to be spoken. I'm still in love with her; I just can't do anything about it. Then there's this short, shy Hispanic girl who gives me even less time. Never gives me time. I love her now. And on the train the two sit right next to each other. Across from me and to the left. I writhe and look to the right. Where do these goddesses come from? Where are they going? Why are they riding the subway? To the right there are three girls who no doubt are in high school. They are just as beautiful. Coming into their age before they can fully appreciate the natural appeal of their unsullied bodies. They'll waste it on some zit-faced fifteen-year-old who's only making sure he isn't the only virgin in his class. Neither party will savor it until it's too late. This is what I deal with. And don't get me started on dating. I went on this blind date with this model/poet, a real Sylvia Plath (suicidal tendencies and all), right, and things were going well, real well, so I got a second date. This time I met her at her place. Only she lived in a women's residence (at this point I'm wondering when she's going to stick her head in the oven!). It's the 21st century! Why do these places still exist? I had to be escorted by this real troll of a lady with a solitary chin hair that curled in up to her bottom lip. She smelled like a cross between baby powder and Newports. And I was supposed to respect her because Sylvia said she sang on some Dylan track in the ‘80s. Naturally things didn’t work out between me and Ms. Plath. I couldn’t go back to her place without being castrated first, and the two Sudanese refugees I live with are so judgmental that I’m afraid to bring anyone home.
That’s all I have to say for now.
Best,
Tyro
The Consequences of Legislation
By: Scott Sousa
An older couple hosts Thanksgiving for their family. The grandfather gathers his six grandchildren in the kitchen. He digs through the recycling container, selects a one liter soda bottle, saws off its neck with a utility knife and dumps a handful of change into it. He holds the bottle in his hand and says, "Whoever can tell me how much money I have here in my hand can keep the change."
The children, easily amused by petty amounts of money, eagerly take turns counting the coins. All of them unanimously agree there is $1.17 in the bottle, except for one who was 2 cents short, who will predictably go to art school.
"Wrong!" the grandfather says laughing.
Jimmy, six years of age, recounts the change and confidently says, "Grandpa, there is $1.17 there."
Laughing still, the grandfather says, "You're wrong, Jimmy. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! Being confident about being wrong will get you no where in life."
Every year for the next ten years the grandfather would test his grandchildren and ridicule them for being wrong. Each year, fewer and fewer participated as a result.
One day, Jimmy is helping his grandfather move. It had been a long drive to Ann Arbor from Buffalo, but after a late lunch they begin moving furniture into the new house. Jimmy catches a glimpse of the soda bottle in the truck as they both lift an old, heavy, oak dresser. Jimmy thinks about this puzzle once again. Halfway up the flight of stairs to the second floor, the answer comes to Jimmy. "Grandpa, I got it! There's $1.22 in total, including the bottle deposit."
Laughing, the grandfather replies, "Wrong, once again. We're in Michigan now and the bottle deposit here is 10 cents."
Jimmy debates loosening his grip on the dresses but decides to hang on. There will be a better opportunity, he says to himself.
Change in Judgement
By: Scott Sousa
707-B. Designed to kill bed bugs but it works better as a pork marinade. I smothered my pork chops in it and lit a cigarette. It tastes like motor oil but I've never been a great judge of food so I'll disregard what my mouth is telling me.
I smoked a hit of D.M.T. I had lying around and here's what went down: Nothing too exciting.
I fucked it up. Didn't smoke enough. Choked on the smoke and exhaled too soon. Missed out. Sat at a differing angle. Changed my judgment, said, "fuck it" and went to a local bar to forget about it all.
I'm not sure if I experienced residual effects from the D.M.T. but shit got weird when the French girl with the accordion got on stage to sing about penises. Then there was the other girl, Melissa. She was cute but I lost track of her in an unconventional burrito. Sad claims to make but this is how it happens. Beg to differ? Fuck that. This IS how it happens.