"The Pretender" • Jackson Browne (by Pierre Minar)

The meniscus on the salmon pan in the sink held for longer than I expected. It’s a double sink. The pan’s lip clings to the right countertop. The basin’s central barrier divides the apartment sink into two unequal parts. The left sink part is deeper and broader though less adapted to its burden. Its drain stops up when the sink catch is fully flush. The left part only drains by setting the metal catch askew. This however permits errant chick peas or corn husks to clog or tangle and slow the flow. 

The right part is shallower, smaller, but blessed with a disposal, called, “In-Sink-Erator.” All problems on the right are solved by the switch. Do you feel terror when you need to reach in, that the disposal will start on its own? I do. A terror that incites you to unplug it from below and consider turning off all electricity in the home until you can remove a shredded child’s fork? That wicked switch, so often confused for a light. Instead of sight to be greeted with the loudest noise an apartment can make. 

Now that you know the layout, know that while the salmon pan’s lip clings to the countertop, as I said, its central weight rests on the great wall dividing East from West.

I squirt Dr. Bronner’s into the pan and then fill it with water. Higher the water rises. The pan is not level, so the western hemisphere of the pan becomes the deep end, while soapy waves lap the eastern shore. Underwater lay two burned-on salmon skin strips, like the parallel runways of Newark Airport or Nazca lines flooded after the fall, after the pan society disappeared due to disease and colonial lust. The meniscus puffs, then bulges beyond belief. 

The faucet flows. There’s Newark, New Jersey also to the left, stumpy and shabby, as my father drove north in 1992 to Jackson Browne on Light FM. The city’s faded lumpy twin towers pathetic compared to Manhattan. Like the Appalachians to the Rockies, the reason they’re lower is because they’ve seen more. My father’s precious Buick pulled over for speeding the Turnpike. “I was going the same as everyone else,” he says to my mom as we await the trooper. “It’s because you weren’t with the group,” she responds, evoking wildebeest. The nervous father invited to dance but having only trained as an accountant. No wonder the city was abandoned. No wonder the landing strip is now submerged or soon will be. 

When the force of the water finally bursts the meniscus, a waterfall plummets to the Western state. I try to stop the flow but I can’t, even when I shut the faucet and accidentally flip the In-Sink-Erator ignition. Never again will slanted salmon pan hold water. The meniscus era ends in abominable noise and oily flow. No new meniscus can form now that the Western lip of the pan is wet. The fall has come in spring.

My name is Pierre Minar, I was born in Lebanon and grew up in New Jersey, USA. My work has appeared in Hobart, Bruiser, Flora Fiction, a collection called Giant Robot Poems by Middle West Press, a chapbook called Transmissions From My Yearning Chair by Bottlecap Press, and is forthcoming in Mocking Heart, Keith, and Last Leaves. When I am not writing I work as a lawyer investigating Medicare fraud by big companies. I live in Dallas, Texas.