and like forsaken children
we go back to our
Racing Forms.
this woman at the counter ahead of me
was buying four pairs of panties:
yellow, pink, blue and orange.
the lady at the register kept picking up
the panties and
counting them:
one, two, three, four.
then she counted them again:
one, two, three, four.
will there be anything else?
she asked the lady who was buying the
panties.
no, that’s it, she answered.
no cigarettes or anything?
no, that’s it.
the woman at the register
rang up the sale
collected the money
gave change
looked off into the distance
for a bit
and then she bent under the counter
and got a bag
and put the panties in this bag
one at a time—
first the blue pair, then the yellow,
then the orange, then the pink.
she looked at me next:
how are you doing today?
fair, I said.
is there anything else?
cigarettes?
all I want is what you see in front of
you.
I had hemorrhoid ointment
laxatives
and a box of paper clips.
she rang it up, took my money, made
change, bagged my things, handed them
to me.
have a nice day, she did not say.
and you too,
I said.
you can’t tell a turkey by its feathers
son, my father said, if you only had some
ambition! you have no
get up and go! no
drive!
it’s hard for me to believe that you are really
my son.
yeah, I
said.
I mean, he went on, how are you going to
make it?
your mother is worried sick and the neighbors
think you’re some kind of
imbecile.
what are you going to
do?
we can’t take care of you all your
life!
I’m 15 now, I told him, I won’t be around
much longer.
but look at you, you just sit around in your room
all day! other
boys have jobs, paper routes, Jim Stover works
as an usher at the
Bayou!
HOW IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO
SURVIVE IN THIS
WORLD?
I don’t
know …
you make me SICK! sometimes, having a son like
you, I wish I was
dead.
well, he did die, he died more than 30 years
ago.
and last year I paid
$59,000 income
tax.
there are some people who will
phone a man at 7 a.m.
when he is desperately sick and
hungover.
I always greet
these idiots
with a few violent
words
and the slamming
down of the
receiver
knowing that their
morning eagerness
means that
they retired early
and thus wasted the
preceding
