Perch
It
takes 5 minutes to catch the first perch
and
it’s the biggest I’ve ever seen.
I
catch two more, walk to the lagoon
gut
the fish, throw the innards -
sad
for the fish, and I hate perch
mushy
as mashed potatoes.
Walking
back to camp
I
think about RW
“When
me and my girlfriend
were
in Europe,” he'd said,
“we
saw people traveling alone
and
I felt so sorry for them.”
I
make a fire and cook the fish
eat
it with balsamic vinegar
The
perch is as mushy as I’d remembered
but
that’s what there is to eat
and
I make do.
She Was a Nervous Wreck
I went in and Dr. Wang did his thing.
There was a new hygienist,
mascaraed eyes peering above the mask.
She couldn't have been more than 20
and Dr. Wang's Mandarin
had a gentler lilt with her.
As I was leaving they led in
a white woman using a walker.
“I need to talk to you,” she said
to Dr. Wang.
They went into his office
but I could still hear them.
“Its a culture thing,” she said,
“I'm just more comfortable
with my own kind.”
I live with the Chinese
and one of my favorite things about
them is
I can't understand a word
they say.
Chipper
A man went to the doctor and told him,
“my shit smells awful.”
The doctor looked at him.
“It smells worse than it should,”
explained the man,
“and also, it's an unhealthy shade of
brown.”
The doctor checked his watch,
he was late for a tee off.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
“In fact,” said the man, “I have
recently finished
writing a novel, it's taken a decade,
and everyone I've submitted it to
says it's absolute crap
and so I feel, perhaps,
I've been wasting my time.”
“Time is never wasted,” said the
doctor
again checking his watch,
“it is merely lost.”
Bio: Jon Bennett is a poet and musician living in San Francisco's Chinatown. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first novel, "The Unfat," a speculative sci-fi story about autism. You can link up with him at https://www.facebook.com/jon.
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