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| Not this Donna Loren |
I
There once lived a waitress named
Donna Loren (not that Donna Loren)
who worked at a restaurant called The Steak Trough. She was good at her job. When
she wasn’t busy with tables she helped the dishwashers, which seemed like a
nice thing to do.
One
night the manager discovered that the reason she helped the dishwashers was so
that she could eat the debris off the plates. He yelled at her in a demeaning
manner and she fled the restaurant in tears. On her way home she stopped at
McDonald’s and ate two burgers out of the Dumpster. Solace.
II
My rehab roommate was a heroin
addict named Rupe. He didn’t scream or sweat or suffer like The Man with the Golden Arm. He was
calm. He kept to his bed. Rupe received three experimental, mystery shots a day.
I noticed a change after every injection. His eyes grew distant, as if peering
into something vast. His skin started to sag. On the third day, his face began
to change – a softening of features. On the fourth day he was comic Morey
Amsterdam.
I was going to request another roommate
but I didn’t want to miss any of his jokes.
III
I’m stranded in an area so rural,
so remote, that I don’t recognize any of the product brands on the shelves of the
general store (the only store). Healey’s Dead Duck Potato Chips? Ripped Suture Root Beer? Barbara
Lemieux’s Sugar-Therapy Donuts? Cause-of-Death
Hot Sauce? A whole line of Vulture-Stain
condiments (no relish, but seven different kinds of ketchup). Fibromitosis Mixed Nuts. Abe Lincoln’s Corpse brand beef jerky. Raw Sewage Coffee (with crystals!). And Dead Baby Sunflower Seeds.
The name of the milk is so bizarre,
grotesque, disturbing and tragic I can’t bring myself to mention it. Let alone
drink it.
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