"Pumped Up Kicks" • Foster the People (by Jeremy Mauser)

Say something about growth, but don’t you dare 

mention blossom or bloom. How does the punch- 

line go? Who walks into the bar? My teeth pulse 

with the tremor of a machine gun, but I dare 

not mention gun violence. I dare not amoeba 

myself toward those hazel eyes. Oh, right, there 

was a priest and—no, it was just a man. Is it ever 

just a man? My great uncle wears his dead son’s 

shoes as a form of protest. You might think 

he wants to show the miles unwalked, but my 

cynicism says it’s to keep us frozen in April20, 

1999. Your teeth pulse with the tremor 

of a machine gun; we still don’t mention 

gun violence. No, his eyes aren’t hazel— 

they’re blue. My eyes are blue, which means 

yours are too. Freezing is the opposite of growth, 

except when growth loosens its grip on linearity. 

Except I don’t think anyone walks into the bar, 

unless it’s someone barefoot, unless my father’s 

cousin is looking for a drink. He was fifteen 

on the day of Columbine, but today he’d have 

been in his forties. Wow. He’d be in his forties. 

Sometimes I wonder whether I’d still write 

about him if my parents had named me 

after him, like they considered. Some- 

thing tells me I wouldn’t be myself, or at least 

this version of myself, if my eyes were hazel 

and not blue. Pardon me, I forgot 

this was a conversation. If you’re being 

candid, and why wouldn’t I be, our words 

have been amoebaing toward some lustful 

void, and I’m happy to speak with anyone 

willing to listen. Before Columbine 

1

was a school, it was a flower. Well, it still 

is a flower. I walk into a bar, my shoes 

tied around my waist, and I order something 

sweet. As a bartender labors, as the bar lays 

bare, you look toward the camera, and I 

smile, because we know who’s watching, 

I wink, and you raise my trembling finger 

to my blue lips—no, to my hazel lips. 

Jeremy Mauser is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. His prose and poetry can be found, or is forthcoming, in Sonora Review, Eggplant Emoji, and Does It Have Pockets, among other publications. He is an Assistant Fiction Editor at the Black Warrior Review and a stand-up comic who can be found on Instagram @jeremymauserwrites and Bluesky @jeremymauser.bsky.social.