"Rage" by Bruce Cohen

My finger is a boomerang of blame but it has a nasty splinter. Cut it out with an unsterilized pairing knife. I come at the world with kitchen knives. With my forged internal passport I pass out karaoke microphones for family battles. I pass out rubber knives, apology-scripts and blanks of course. I hire an opinionated stenographer. I plain pass out. I install a boxing-ring bell we haggled for at a tag sale. I incorporate back-up background singers who have their own unsynchronized choruses: I just want the world to be the way it used to be when I wake up. My business is my business and my business is failing. Even return customers now patronize the new giant chains. Don't mix this up with sprouting franchises. Each hour I mark down the merchandise till I close shop, till my business evaporates, till my gross national product is by the dumpster blooming with imperfect condoms, broken liquor bottles and milk carton children. This is the part where you think I'm a little touched, a sigh of relief you aren't me. I'm glad I'm not you either in your crumbling rooming house where the floor is moving, where plaster's flaking from the ceiling. You think people are dancing or bowling in the apartment above but the earthquake is inside your heart and you're convinced it's only heartburn. Parked cars are rolling down the hill, emergency breaks losing grip, owners scurry from rooming houses in their boxers or nightgowns yelling Stop! The automobiles seem to be giggling. Tape my mouth please. Place me in a warm bath and throw a plugged-in toaster at me and say Catch! I got this toaster free for opening up a Christmas club account. My family tree is a Bonsai locked in a miniature autumn. A limb will fall off in the next big storm but it seems to be a twig. What's that bug called that looks just like a twig? I smell the chlorine from the neighbor's pool which I am never invited to swim in. They are closing it up now that it's autumn. They've un-inflated the smiling flamingo colored seals. Is there any appropriate moment to grab another human by the throat, squeeze the oxygen out? I have committed suicide in so many ways I eat oysters raw but fear biting into a pearl. Figure that one out. They cannot differentiate between the intentional and accidental nails in my tire. My soul is very thread bare too. A million galoshes are piled outside my front door. Some pairs have two left feet; they aspire to be shoes. Please get the splinter out. Get it out and when you do and when you squint and hold it up to the light bulb to see what it is, how big it is, what it's made of, explain it to me as one splinter refuses to confide in another.