x-post: and the Wetumpka. Sweet Wetumpka. Of it all.

It’s Monkey Vortex Monday. In today’s installment, Croatian malcontent Rodney K. puts our longstanding feud aside for one minute and 45 seconds — just barely enough time to bust it Poet-Makes-a-House-Call style with: Welcome to the City of Wetumpka — another all-new, all-free, all-MP3 MVRT experience, brought to you by the good people at BackMan. BackMan: equipping the backs of our Presidents with noticeable, rectangular objects for more than thirty years.

Doorway conversation

Talking with her about her brother's death
years back now. And it's the first time we talked.
She just had a kid
first kid
last month
my son's almost four
good guy
big boy.
Their house looks the same
even the table
even the carpet
and I tell her that.
The house even smells the same.
But you can't say the house smells the same.
Or ask if the sofa's still covered in plastic.
I think of him often. I tell her that instead.
I tell her he meant a lot to me, which is true. She says thanks.
And then I use the word "maudlin." I say: "Sorry to be maudlin."
But it's the wrong word. And that's what sticks with me later.
It's not maudlin.
Her brother's dead.

Ah, yes. Here’s the outrage.

you: I have to put the cat to sleep.
me: why?
you: he’s leaving the dentist’s poop all over the house.
me: how does he get the dentist’s poop?
you: I give it to him.
she: why?
me: yeah, why?
you: because he’s bored. he needs something to play with.
she: but how do you know it’s the dentist’s poop?
you: I am the dentist.

Burble

Tonight in his sleep, Sam said:
“He wants a chocolate Gogurt
and to fight bad guys.”
He said it a couple of times.
Always like that — in the third-person.
And then he fell back asleep.
And I say:
Congratulations!
Enemies of evil!
Congratulations!
Gogurt people!
International chocolate conspiracy!
You own part of my child’s brain.