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A Vicious Cycle

I have seen the bumper stickers on the bumper of your Toyota Prius therefore I have induced that you believe you are working here to make the world greener. You should know I voted for President George W. Bush twice and I would have voted for him a third time if they had let me. At present there are major differences between you and I. Normally I do not like people like you. If you were anybody else we would have major personal issues between us which I would not let you forget and I would consistently be doing things to irritate you and get under your skin and I would probably be handing you your ass on a regular basis. I do not believe global warming has been caused by humans nor do I believe we are going to run out of oil any time soon. I have three Daughters who are in elementary school. Maya is in the first grade. Halley is in the third grade. Celeste is in the fifth grade. I love my Daughters in a fierce and animalistic way which I cannot describe using words so I am not even going to try for that in this letter. My Daughters have been indoctrinated to believe that global warming has been caused by humans pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that we are going to run out of fossil fuels sometime next week. I allow them to continue believing in these falsities because I am a hero to them for working at a Recycling Plant. I have visited their classes on the days when Fathers are asked to come in and talk about their jobs and when I say I work at a Recycling Plant the teacher and the students look upon me with supreme awe and reverence. I will admit I like my girls thinking what I do is crucial to the welfare of the planet. I will admit I like people thinking of me as a real hero and yes I am going to keep it that way. However the fact is it would make not a lick of difference to me if I were the guy whose job it is to steer oil tankers into icebergs in order to drive up the price of gasoline if it paid better than what I make here. One of the first things you are going to need to learn is we are not here to save the world. You are going to need to get that saving the world crap out of your head ASAP . What you are going to need to learn to understand is that the only reason you are here is to sort through Recyclables as fast as possible because if you lag on the belt or if you lag on the lot that is going to fuck the rest of us up which means we will have to stay late with no overtime. If you are not busting your ass out there like the rest of us then you will get that same ass handed back to you. I do not care who your Grampappy is. Now as you may not know the man who works glass on the belt is named Ricardo. The first piece of truly important advice I will impart to you is Do Not Fuck With That Particular Mexican. Do not talk to him or look him in the eyes even when he has his face mask on. Ricardo was incarcerated for seventeen years prior to his employment here for a reason that if I were to divulge it to you I am 100 per cent certain you would quit immediately and then I would find myself in a world of shit with Miss Heather. Ricardo has what are called anger issues and you will be able to tell exactly how careful you need to be around him based on his behaviour on the belt on any given day. If Ricardo is up there deliberately smashing bottles and allowing the shards of glass to pass on to the shredder that means you have to be extremely careful and sensitive toward him at all times. For example if you see Ricardo smashing bottles on the belt the first thing you have to be sure to never do is touch a glass bottle which comes out of the feeder. You are going to be working right in front of him so this is very critical to you. After you climb up your ladder and get to your station if you see Ricardo up there smashing bottles all over the place then you must not touch an unbroken glass bottle under any circumstances. Say you are working your #1’s and say you see a crushed three-litre bottle of Mountain Dew which happens to be underneath or perhaps merely touching a glass bottle. Just let that Mountain Dew pass you by. It is not worth the risk. Of course Danny is going to be pissed if a crapload of #1’s start coming his way and yes you will feel that pain. Danny works clean-up which means he is at the end of the belt. Danny is the one of us who has to deal with all the Recyclables we miss in order to prevent any and all Recyclables from going into the shredder. So say Ricardo is smashing bottles and say the feeder drops a crapload of glass and a crapload of #1’s on the belt at the same time. What are you going to do? You are going to let those #1’s pass you by. You cannot risk it. Say you reach for a #1 at the same time Ricardo is reaching for a glass bottle to smash and your hand gets in the way or by picking up your #1 you knock the glass bottle away from where Ricardo was reaching for it. If that happens Ricardo is going to grab another glass bottle and smash it on your hard hat or smash it on your face mask or most likely smash it on your hand. The glass will hopefully not penetrate your glove but your hand is going to hurt like hell no matter what and that is going to fuck your performance level up which means it is going to fuck the rest of our performance levels up. The belt is not going to stop just because you cannot move one of your hands. So you are going to need to go ahead and let those #1’s pass you by which of course is going to fuck everything up too. What is going to happen is Danny is going to have to deal with all the #1’s coming his way. Remember the bin for the #1’s is behind you and also that you are on the opposite side of the belt from Danny which means Danny is going to have all these #1’s coming his way and he is going to try to throw them across the belt down into the #1 bin behind you. That is not easy. And if Danny starts missing and #1’s start ricocheting off the sides of your bin and falling down on to the lot then the Illegals working newspaper or cardboard down there are going to have to pick up the #1’s and toss them up into the bin in order to sort through all the Recyclables they have to sort through. Now if Miss Heather looks out the window and sees a pack of Illegals doing jump shots with #1’s we are all fucked. Also remember there is a good chance that if you have to let a crapload of #1’s go by in order to save yourself from the wrath of Ricardo then a lot of the #1’s which Danny has to deal with and try to throw past you are going to end up hitting you in the face mask or hitting you in the chest and they will often bounce off you and land back on the belt and head back toward Danny again because generally when something hits you up there you do not have time to react. So now that same #1 you let pass the first time is going to end up going back to Danny again and Danny is going to throw it back your way again to try and land it in your bin and of course there is a good chance that same #1 is going to hit you and fall back on the belt again and head back toward Danny again and he is going to throw it back at you again and all the while other #1’s will start passing you by because you will be distracted by Danny throwing #1’s your way which means more #1’s will be coming his way and therefore more #1’s will be thrown your way and therefore even more #1’s will get by you. This is what we call a vicious cycle. A vicious cycle fucks everybody up and everybody is going to want to hand you your ass and yes somebody will. But trust me when I say the ass handing pursuant to a vicious cycle will not be as painful as if Ricardo smashes a bottle on your hand. If and when one of us hands you your ass on account of a vicious cycle we will hand it to you only up to a point. All of us understand that vicious cycles are sometimes unavoidable. Thus there will be difficult decisions which you are going to have to make up there on a daily basis. They will not be easy because for example you are weighing the certainty of getting your ass handed to you on account of a vicious cycle versus the uncertainty of Ricardo seriously injuring your hand and maybe also getting your ass handed to you. If the glass penetrates your glove and there is blood you will have another difficult decision on your hands. You will then need to weigh going down to the trailer for stitches and the certain ass handing you will later receive from one of us for fucking our performance levels up by leaving us in the lurch versus the health risks associated with the amount of blood you will lose if you stay up on the belt with a gash on your hand.

 

I can tell you are a smart kid despite your socialist political leanings which I believe are an act of treason punishable by death but then again I am no judge. So I am sure from what I have stated above you can induce that if Ricardo were out of the equation things would not be so stressful up on the belt. But the fact of the matter is nobody will ever rat out Ricardo for his psychotic behaviour on the belt because everybody knows what Ricardo did to receive those seventeen years of incarceration and everybody up there has families and nobody is willing to take that risk. Not even Jimbo who could reach over and crush Ricardo’s skull with his bare hands in two seconds flat. Or as many of us often fantasise Jimbo could reach over and push Ricardo backwards out of his station which would result in Ricardo falling 35 feet hopefully to his death and we could make it look like an accident. But Jimbo has got four Daughters ranging from two to nine years of age and he will not take that risk. Lately Jimbo’s Daughters have been over at my place being watched by my wife because Jimbo’s wife Carla is once again despite eight months of sobriety back to huffing and Jimbo being the caring Father that he is knows his girls cannot be around that kind of shit under any circumstances. Carla is a beautiful woman. Carla is a beautiful soul and a good Mother too but that woman has a terrible disease called substance abuse which makes her look like shit and act like shit and makes her 100 per cent unfit to be a Mother. But here is the thing you need to realise. The thing you need to realise is all of us belt workers are part of a family. As you may not know everybody who works on the belt except for you and Ricardo are part of an amazing family which sticks together not only through the very best of times but also through the very most fucked up of times. If you want to become a part of this family then you are going to have to earn our trust. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt but right now none of the rest of us trust you. Right now there are a couple of us who still believe you are a spy. I do not personally believe you are a spy. I would not be sticking my neck out like this for you if I believed you were a spy because a lot of the shit I am telling you would fuck us all up if it got back to Miss Heather or your Grampappy. I do not know why you are here exactly but if you are planning to stick around and this is not just some summer gig where you think you are going to dip your big toe in real life for a minute then split the first thing I would suggest is you sell that alien ship car and use the money to buy yourself a brand new Chevrolet truck. Most of us think I am nuts to be taking any sort of interest in you and I have taken no small amount of shit for my interest in reaching a hand out to you like this but the fact is I was once 17 years old and I was equally misguided and I could have used some words of wisdom and a good family like this one to go to for support when I needed it. So I guess I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart even though there are certain things about you which make me want to kill you. I will not lie when I say that on Monday there was a moment on the belt when you threw a #2 over your shoulder and I had to do everything in my power to stop myself from pulling you out of your station and pinning you down on the belt and letting the shredder have its way with you. That is how Dale died. As you may not know Dale is the name of the man you are replacing on #1’s. But the difference is Dale going through the shredder was an accident and I am talking about pushing you down into the shredder on purpose.

 

I will return to my discussion of the interpersonal human dynamics of the belt in a minute but before I forget I need to remind you that the temperature on the lot regularly reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit and the temperature on the belt even though there is the canopy and there are finally misters thanks to the political manoeuvrings of yours truly runs to around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Now there is a big difference in those 20 degrees. It is like the difference between being on the surface of Mercury without any liquid cooling in your space suit versus being in a mild climate with a cool ocean breeze swirling all around your naked chest. It is a difference which you will come to understand quite well if you have not done so already. Now all of us prefer the belt to the lot because of those 20 degrees even though the belt constitutes a much more hazardous work environment than the lot. Most of us are going to want to work the belt as much as possible and for the time being that means you are probably going to have to work the lot more than you would like even though you are not an Illegal. The Illegals spend 100 per cent of their time working the lot because they are willing to do anything for a buck and they do not really understand the difference anyhow. Also you have to speak English to work the belt. That is a regulation put in place for safety reasons even though no one talks up there because there is also a regulation which states that everybody must wear ear plugs at all times on the belt and therefore we cannot hear any English which we might want to speak. Some of the Illegals probably speak enough English to work the belt but we do not let them unless one of us is out sick in which case Marcus will go to the lot and ask, ‘Which of you Illegals speaks English?’ and all of them will raise their hands until Marcus asks a more specific question like, ‘What is the opposite of hot?’ and only a few of them will be able to answer it. Marcus will then choose from one of the Illegals who said, ‘Cold.’ I am sure it is going to be hard for someone like you who comes from a privileged liberal upbringing and believes everyone deserves the same rights and the same respect but you are going to need to learn to think of the Illegals as basically animals and you cannot concern yourself about whether they get seriously injured in the workplace. There is at least one serious injury on the lot every day. There is usually one serious injury on the belt per week. By serious injury on the belt I mean an injury which results in the worker needing to go to Miss Heather’s trailer for medical attention or needing to go for offsite care. If you work the numbers you will understand the belt is more dangerous given that there are only seven of us up there whereas there are about forty Illegals working the lot plus most of the accidents which happen to the Illegals on the lot would not happen to you or I because we possess human reason. When one of the Illegals sustains a serious injury he is fired on the spot. That might seem unfair to you but the fact of the matter is that son of a bitch was lucky to have that job in the first place. We are all our brother’s keeper is something I believe in down to the very deepest most recesses of my soul but what you are going to need to learn to understand is that Christian doctrines do not apply to the Illegals and if one of us sees you treating them with respect or mingling with them like you were doing yesterday then one of us will most certainly be handing you your ass later that same day.

 

You will get your ass handed to you if you sustain a serious injury unless it is so serious you have to go for offsite care. If you have to go for offsite care and you end up in the hospital you will be visited by our Wives who will bring chocolates and flowers and such things to you. If it looks like you are not going to make it then I would not be surprised if you were visited by two or three of us belt workers ourselves even if something like that happened to you this week which it absolutely will if you do not heed the advice being presented herein. If you stick around and end up becoming one of us then all five of us brothers will be there by your side from the minute we get off work until the minute we hit the bar. Believe it or not even Ricardo showed up at the hospital where they took Dale after the accident. Ricardo came into the waiting room with an empty Heineken bottle in his hand and we all went to cover the heads of our Wives and Daughters but then Ricardo gently placed the bottle down on the bedside table next to some flowers. I do not know what kind of get well present an empty Heineken bottle represents. That sort of thing only emphasises Ricardo’s psychotic nature but we all had to admit at least it was something which was why Billy and Marcus and I stopped plotting to kill Ricardo every day over lunch. Now listen up. Dale worked the #1 station on the belt for nine years. Those are some very big shoes you are going to have to fill. I guess you would say Dale was our equivalent of a genius. I remember for example coming in late on a Monday morning last year because the girls missed the bus and Debra was down with the flu and I was walking through the lot toward the belt whereupon I found myself bearing witness to two perfect streams of #1’s flowing forth from above Dale’s shoulders. I am talking about two perfect parabolas of #1’s spinning end over end which would rise from Dale’s shoulders high into the sky and then begin to fall and finally land smack dab in the middle of the #1 bin. It was like something out of one of Maya’s cartoons. Or it was like something you get to see maybe once in your life like Halley’s Comet or an act of superhuman ability like somebody lifting a two-ton Chevy under which one of his Daughters got pinned. That is the kind of amazing I am talking about and that is the kind of amazing you are going to have to become if you want to become a member of a truly amazing family such as this.

 

There is some other stuff you need to know. You have been here now for almost a month therefore I will induce that you have noticed all of us belt workers wear pink bandannas under our hard hats and there is a reason for this which is not that any of us are homosexuals. We have noticed you alternate between wearing a blue bandanna and a green bandanna. If you do not change to wearing pink bandannas exclusively then you will be putting your human welfare at serious risk and here is why. As you may not know Billy is the name of the man who works aluminium next to me on the belt and he is also one of the Bobcat and front loader operators on the lot. Billy is a truly racist individual and he has it out for the Illegals in a way which none of us really understand but Billy is who he is and there is nothing to be done about that. On the lot none of us ever wear our hard hats even though it is technically against regulation but Miss Heather does not say anything because the Illegals are not provided with hard hats and therefore that regulation is not enforced. When Billy is operating the Bobcat or the front loader it is these pink bandannas we wear which serve to distinguish us from the Illegals none of which ever wear pink bandannas because I am sure in Mexico just like in the USA pink bandannas are the code word for homosexual. As I saw on the Discovery Channel while watching a nature documentary for one of Celeste’s biology homework assignments homosexuality rears its sinful head among all species alike. Now I am not a racist but I am also not stupid. You may have been taught racism and stupidity go hand in hand but that is 100 per cent incorrect because Billy is indeed racist but he is not at all stupid. Billy went to two years of community college plus a year of regular college and if Billy has an opportunity to seriously injure an Illegal with the Bobcat or the front loader without getting caught then oftentimes depending on what is going on in his head at that moment he is absolutely going to do it. He will not ever do it out in the open in front of all the others but say if a couple of them happen to head off alone to collect some newspaper which the wind has blown over near the freight containers then you bet your ass if Billy is driving the front loader and sees them he will punch the gas and follow them out there either to screw with them or to seriously injure them or both. But now here is the thing so listen up. All of us love it out there by the freight containers because there is so much shade and that is where we go to take a nap or relax if we happened to find a good magazine on the lot that day. This is something else I am going to have to tell you about because there is a system in place for determining who gets to take which magazines home and you must respect that system even if you feel you are being short changed because maintaining trust amongst one another depends in large part on everybody following the rules of the system we have set up for the allocation of the magazines which get found nearly every day amongst the newspaper and the cardboard. For example if you ever find an astronomy magazine or a science magazine that has something to do with outer space you have to hand it over to me with no questions asked because the universe is a serious hobby of mine. Likewise if you find any fishing magazines or any magazines regarding mature nude models then you have to hand those over to Jimbo. But if you go back there by the freight containers to read your magazine there is a chance especially if he is blasted that Billy might follow you and crush you against the wall with the front loader or run you over with the Bobcat but if you are wearing a pink bandanna he will not do so no matter how drunk or psychotic he happens to be at that moment because not only does Billy believe passionately in the eradication of all peoples who are not of Aryan lineage he believes with equal passion in the preservation of all Aryan peoples of which you are one. When Billy sees that pink bandanna on your head his racist passion will override his drunken psychotic rage and you will be OK .

 

All of us except Ricardo rotate showing up early before Miss Heather gets in to deposit a twenty-pound bag of ice and seventy-two cans of Miller in the big blue cooler we have stashed behind one of the freight containers and we have to drink those beers pretty fast during lunch which is why the majority of serious injuries occur between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock in the afternoon which was when Dale suffered the serious injury which resulted in his death. If you become a part of us and your turn comes to bring the beer and you forget to bring it or if you forget the ice or if you buy anything except for Miller then you will receive an ass handing the manner of which is inconceivable to you at present given what I imagine to be the privileged conditions of your liberal upbringing. And let me say now before I forget that if those bumper stickers are not removed from your vehicle by tomorrow I will do it myself. I have worked here for eleven years so I know what I am talking about when I say a lot of shit about you is going to have to change very soon or else there will be no future for you here.

 

I am coming to the end of this but there are a couple other things you need to know. You need to know all of us belt workers have only Daughters except for you because you are only 17 years old and you have not started a family quite yet. I have three Daughters. Jimbo has four Daughters. Billy has a Daughter and another Daughter in the oven. Marcus has two Daughters who are twins. Danny has a Daughter. Dale had a Daughter. Even Ricardo has two step-Daughters if you can believe it. That makes fifteen total Daughters. Sometimes we talk about the fact that we all have only Daughters. All of us wanted only Sons but I think now we are mostly fine having only Daughters. For the past couple of years on one Sunday a month we all get together with all of our Daughters while our Wives go off together to see a movie. You might be wondering what a bunch of guys like us do with a bunch of little Daughters running around all over the place. Well of course we drink beer but we cannot get blasted because we are solely responsible for the welfare of our Daughters during those three hours our Wives are at the movies and we take that responsibility very seriously but also because our Wives leave us with a strict ration of beer. I know you are only 17 years old but if you really do want to become a part of us then you are going to have to start drinking a lot of beer and you are probably also going to have to have yourself a Daughter. Dale has been dead for over six months so maybe I should introduce you to Jolene. You and her might end up getting hitched and then you can help raise Tiffany and you can come over and be with us on Sunday afternoons if you start to change your ways. One of the other things we do on Sundays is play hopscotch on the driveway but I am not going to get into that here. You look at these guys on the belt and you try to imagine them on their knees drawing hopscotch lines in all the colours of the rainbow and then hopping around the driveway with a bunch of beautiful little Daughters. The other day I snuck up on Jimbo by the freight containers to find him jacking off to nudey photographs of 80-year-olds. Last week at lunch I saw Marcus break a Miller bottle over his bare head for no reason whatsoever. Try to watch in your head Billy chasing down an Illegal with the front loader and then try to see him hopping his way across the grass of my backyard with his feet and the skinny legs of all these amazing Daughters of ours tied up in potato sacks. That might seem like a paradox to you right now but if and when you become one of us I guarantee you will soon learn to see it is all in perfect accordance with the universal rules of human logic.

 

There are many other things you need to know but I do not have time to get into all of them so I will conclude by telling you what happened to Dale so you know whose shoes you will be filling and then you are just going to have to pick up the rest as you go along.

 

Like I said Dale’s accident occurred between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock which means that we were 100 per cent blasted. Dale usually does not imbibe as much beer over lunch as the rest of us. Usually Dale only drinks six or seven beers but on this particular day he drank ten or eleven beers. Dale and Jolene had a big fight the previous night and that is why he drank more than usual which is completely understandable. I remember all through lunch as he was drinking those beers he could not stop talking about what an asshole he had been to Jolene the previous night and how much he regretted this thing he said and that thing he said and all of us tried to console him by telling him we were 100 per cent sure Jolene deserved whatever terrible things he had said to her. At one point he started crying and I will tell you in my eleven years working here I have never seen a man cry at this Recycling Plant even during the most brutal of ass handings. When we got back to the belt everything seemed to be going smoothly. Dale was tossing #1’s over his shoulders like the true Olympian athlete I will always remember him as but then all of a sudden he decided to stop I guess on account of a sudden re-emergence of those sore feelings about what occurred between Jolene and him the previous night and he starting letting all the #1’s pass him by. Danny was not expecting a vicious cycle because Ricardo was not breaking bottles that day but a vicious cycle is exactly what Danny got and when you are blasted a vicious cycle becomes vicious to the second power. Danny started throwing #1’s in the direction of Dale and trying to land them in the #1 bin but most of them ended up back on the belt and of course all that time more and more #1’s were coming out of the feeder and pretty soon it seemed like all there was up there was #1’s. It was like a river of #1’s maybe 3 or 4 feet deep and so at that point all of us even Ricardo started double-shifting on #1’s because we knew Dale was out of the game and we knew if one of us hit our Emergency Kill Button just because of a vicious cycle we would be in a universe of shit with Miss Heather. I turned to look at Dale and saw him standing in his station with his arms at his sides and his head down and I think I saw those tears again but it is hard to say because of how many #1’s were bouncing off his face mask and his hard hat at the time. I remember I looked over to the shredder and I saw some legs and jeans being twisted up together like some braids of hair and at the time I did not believe that what I saw could actually be what I thought I saw by which I mean it did not register in my brain that those could in fact be the legs and jeans of Dale. One minute he was standing there in his station and then another minute he was not there anymore. Try to think of something you are always used to seeing where it is like Polaris commonly known as the North Star and then one night you look and it is not there anymore because it went supernova. To you it is just something out there far away that is gone but up close there was a whole world there or even many worlds if it had orbiting planets and even more worlds if those planets themselves had moons. That is how I think of the passing of Dale by which I mean some worlds disappeared that day including the ones created by him and I when we would engage in our lengthy conversations at the end of the bar in which we shared together our theories concerning all the physical properties of the universe.

 

Danny later told us he saw a pair of boots amongst the river of #1’s headed down into the shredder but he thought nothing of it because stuff like old boots is exactly the sort of trash Danny often lets pass through because liberals will mix stuff like old boots in with their Recyclables because they do not understand the difference between charity and sustainability. Liberals just close their eyes and grab blindly at ways to save the world. And it is good folks like Dale and the rest of us here who end up suffering the consequences. I have worked here for eleven years and not once in all that time have I ever personally recycled a Recyclable. At my house we have a bin designated Garbage and a bin designated Recyclables and the girls love to come ask me whether this piece of plastic or that piece of plastic is a Recyclable and I tell them the truth and then watch as they toss it in the appropriate bin. Once per week they help me load the Recyclables bin in the Chevy and on my drive to work I make a detour to the dumpster behind the Big K and dump all the Recyclables in the trash. That is another thing. If we ever catch you recycling a Recyclable outside of the Recycling Plant your ass will be handed to you and when you look down at your ass it will appear to you as if your ass itself has been recycled. Now there is one I am sure even your Grampappy would appreciate. Danny later told us he saw a pair of boots amongst the river of #1’s headed down into the shredder but he thought nothing of it because stuff like old boots is exactly the sort of trash Danny often lets pass through because liberals will mix stuff like old boots in with their Recyclables because they do not understand the difference between charity and sustainability. Liberals just close their eyes and grab blindly at ways to save the world. And it is good folks like Dale and the rest of us here who end up suffering the consequences. I have worked here for eleven years and not once in all that time have I ever personally recycled a Recyclable. At my house we have a bin designated Garbage and a bin designated Recyclables and the girls love to come ask me whether this piece of plastic or that piece of plastic is a Recyclable and I tell them the truth and then watch as they toss it in the appropriate bin. Once per week they help me load the Recyclables bin in the Chevy and on my drive to work I make a detour to the dumpster behind the Big K and dump all the Recyclables in the trash. That is another thing. If we ever catch you recycling a Recyclable outside of the Recycling Plant your ass will be handed to you and when you look down at your ass it will appear to you as if your ass itself has been recycled. Now there is one I am sure even your Grampappy would appreciate.

 

You must think carefully about everything I have told you and ask yourself if you believe you have the strength and courage of character to join us in a very serious way. If you think you do then I will keep sticking my neck out for you and eventually you will become part of us because these guys look up to me. I am their moral leader because I am the one who convinced Miss Heather to let us run water to the belt and install the misters which was a very big deal around here. If you think you do not possess the required character traits or if you are not willing to do the hard work to learn them then let me know and I will aid you in your departure by which I mean your ass and my foot will have a brief but highly productive meeting.

 

Now go back and read this whole thing over a few times and then once you have it memorised you will need to burn these pages to a crisp with the matches I have included and then come see me first thing tomorrow with your answer. We will be waiting for you out behind the freight containers. I cannot speak for the others but at least one of us will be hoping you make the decision to join us and that is all it takes. Like it says on your bumper sticker which will soon be removed either by your hand or by my hand holding a tool which was not designed for the removal of bumper stickers One Voice Can Change The World.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is the author of From Old Notebooks and Avatar. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, and teaches at Virginia Tech.

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poetry

February 2016

This is an excerpt from the middle of a longer poem. The full poem is in Moschovakis’s forthcoming book,...

 

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