| Thunder Sandwich #17
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 dweeb by jeff filipski |
| CARNIVORE I. Mornings I harrow, afternoons harvest heirloom tomatoes. Nights I eat the seeds, spit the flesh. Staked to square trellises and clipped stem-tight, they never fail to thrive for me. Plump Burbanks, pinkskinned Brandywines people the vines like fairytale children in a small town warlock's kitchen garden. One hour too long in the sun and they burst. The skinny lady in the floppy hat and matching floral gloves stops by again. "Looking good," she says, inserting her chin between the pickets. "You are kind," I say. II. By day I watch him from the third floor study, sweating in his perfect patch. The sun sinks into his broad back with fangs I imagine my own. While I chew bacon in the sandwich my wife makes, she walks the fence to him, returns soon -- flushed and gratified. God! She beds early, never sees him naked, rabid, rolling in nettles by the shed, shreds of neighborhood witches in his teeth. UNREAD He parses for an object, mumbles her name in slow organic rhythms. His blind, blunt thumbs stumble her Braille matrix, leave hollow bumps unread. He traces her back and forth and back, like a mad dyslexic riding the ridge of a fingerprint. Seeking deep structure, he finds none, no puzzle waiting to be solved or said. Does he live sentenced, then, to love a glyph dumb with portent? Or just a dumb bitch? |
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| ISSN: 1534-4037 |
Edited by Jim Chandler & Haze McElhenny
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