a novel

    based on a line from Molly Brodak

“Please write me a novel in which things are
wonderful in the future,” said my new girlfriend,
then paused to adjust her skirt. She didn’t realize
that I’m a stevedore and don’t have a girlfriend
and besides, I live in Cleveland. I run a rat
show for the Ecuadorians while my invisible
butler serves them fake punch. It may sound
gimmicky but at least it doesn’t pay the bills,
nor does it pay off the ducks that have those
bills still partly attached to their horrifying heads,
though I wish it would, because then I might
get clear of the jackass duck mafia constantly
on my tail. “Please write me a novel,” she began
again, as if already revising, “in which,” but
then her words became soupy and depressing,
and besides, who really was she? At first I tried
to delete her from my phone, then called
a friend in Brooklyn at whose pad I’d crashed
not weeks before, and she suggested looking up
“girlfriend” in the Pictionary. So we began
communicating via hastily made drawings, first
of some dictators sitting at a bistro, outside,
in the springtime, one of them laughing,
saying, “Write me a novel in which the undesirable
ethnic other has been purged,” then the others
laughing too, and my Brooklyn friend guessed
“Hyundai dealership?” Uggh, I’m the rat man,
I can’t draw, I want to make things wonderful
for both of us but wouldn’t know where to start
even if I could write prose, my fine feathered
friend—or friends. P.S. Can’t get over that hat!

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