Big brawl involving 31 breaks out at Waffle House. Angela is ordering. Angela excuses herself hungry, tips waiter, leaves lover, exits breakfast, sits curbside in parking lot. Angela is a free young woman. Angela ignores violence inside, enjoys snow outside. Is Angela’s lover eating toast? Nana wishes to rewind time, follow the saddest Parisian Symbolist from absinthe bar, make it clear: her dad left her mom when Nana was 14 only to reconnect unplanned in some Food Lion 28 years later. No reconciliation beyond weird. Can Nana cure French melancholia? Robin and Dwight guard humanity’s sole remaining cow, Betty. 6 seasons: shot 981 ranch trespassers. This year is calm, breezy. Line of polite library card holders visit, pay nickels to feed Betty hay. No one angry. Milk or meat lack is accepted. What odds Betty enjoys attention? Sara swims indoor pool laps as she’s mad at the Devil. Her locker # 457, her lock combo 67-452-21. She dries. Her locker has altered to # 278. No locker extends past # 300. Combo works. All her clothes gone. Should Sara take baptism at the local lake? Ron finds a ripped piece of The Constitution. Nobody believes Ron. It reads: I’m 5’4 weigh 100 lbs. Surprise! I’m James Madison. Kay who works at library urges Ron bring corner piece, she has an analysis machine. How much is this all going to cost Ron?
Jeffrey Hecker is author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011) & chapbooks Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013) & Ark Aft (The Magnificent Field, 2020). Recent work appears in South Dakota Review, Yalobusha Review, and Posit. A fourth-generation Hawaiian-American, he teaches at The Muse Writers Center & reads for Quarterly West. Find him @jeffrey_hecker.
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