I feel like a shoelace someone keeps stumbling over—stupid, shoddy, unsafe.
Outside, it's gray. Of course.
Detroit will either come back or it won’t. We were almost there, but now I don't know. On Wednesday, people may be handing out guns on the street corner.
Yay, for the Second Amendment said no one who lived through MSU, Sandy Hook, Vegas, you name it.
Of course, many people didn’t live through MSU, Sandy Hook, Vegas, You Name It.
I guess they don’t count.
Many people will either count on Wednesday or they won’t.
I am setting up my pop-up outside the pot place—a prime location to take in all the shenanigans while maintaining a bland aspect.
I ate eight cookies yesterday, but later this week, I might best that.
Horrible Encounters with the Monsters in My Life is the name of the film playing 24/7 in the park.
The principals keep rotating.
We will either have patience for the alternating cast on Wednesday or not.
Let’s hope no one shoots the messenger.
My Irish ancestors lived in mud huts. Mud floors. I heard they were often lucky if they had one stool—just a log they’d sit on called a creepie.
Scooch your creepie up to the fire.
The Irish knew what it was like to live beneath the hand, squashed like so many crumbs and swept away.
Stomped on.
Will that be me on Wednesday?
I am watching Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. It was filmed in 1991.
I don’t want to go back there.
There is a long list of people I can tolerate today, but maybe not on Wednesday.
Please don’t try this at home.
My dog will likely sleep through everything.
He is only safe because I care.
I guess that’s always the case.
Kelly Fordon’s latest short story collection I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020) was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book Garden for the Blind (WSUP) was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. Her new poetry collection What Trammels the Heart will be published by SFASUPress in 2025. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks and has received a Best of the Net Award and Pushcart Prize nominations in three different genres. She teaches at Springfed Arts in Detroit and online, where she runs a fiction podcast called Let’s Deconstruct a Story.
