EDD
Waiting
in line at the EDD
I
see a man out the window
retrieve
a safety razor
and
a bar of soap
from
one of the disused
newspaper
machines
He
comes inside
and
the security guard
lets
him in the bathroom
When
he comes out
he
notices me watching
looks
me up and down
“So
it begins,” he says
Or
so it ends.
Carrie’s
Teeth
The
money’s gone
the
friends are gone
and
all that’s left is meth
“Hi
Jon!” she says,
trying
not to smile
Stalactites
of teeth
eroded
needles
the
first thing
to
disappear.
Heroes and Zeros
Every
couple of years a certain ex of mine
calls
to tell me she’s fine
Her
kids are good and her husband is awesome
and
she asks how I am and I say
“It’s
OK.”
This
time when she called she said,
“You
were there when my dad died,
and
I was thinking…”
Her
brother had died. He’d been working
as
an enforcer for a bookie running
fantasy
football bets.
It
seems ironic
to
have your legs broken
for
making fantasy football bets,
but
my mom is the one dying now
so
I tell her,
“It’s
not OK.”
She
tells me it is, or at least it will be
but
she’s wrong.
This
is what happens when you get older
the
strongest grow weak
and
the weakest go down.
Jon
Bennett writes poems, novels and music in San Francisco's Chinatown.
His sci-fi book "The Unfat," and his second cd, "Submarine" (which he
realizes has some problems), are on sale at Amazon. Conjoin with him on
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jon.
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