Lester was lamenting the state of things we’d gotten ourselves into. “We’ve missed too many boats.” I could see his brain working overtime in there, like his skull was full of panting egrets. He worried about anything, like the recent hole in Canada. This was how life had become. “You know something,” Lester said, “I don’t care,” moving his lips like the wings of a small butterfly. “Let’s face it, in times like these it’s worth uncorking a case of blips from the archives”. We shared a good meal, Lester and me, slurping from the milk pail. Lester grabbed from the newer vegetables. “What’s another crisis, we’ve seen worse.” He looked over at his mother, who sagged sideways in a wheel chair. A crowd gathered in the lobby. Every face looked like a dinner guest sketched on the gaslit air. A downed tree would have put it better.
~
Gary Percesepe is the author of eight books, most recently The Winter of J, a poetry collection published by Poetry Box. He is Associate Editor at New World Writing. Previously he was an assistant fiction editor at Antioch Review. His work has appeared in Christian Century, Maine Review, Brevity, Story Quarterly, N + 1, Salon, Mississippi Review, Wigleaf, Westchester Review, PANK, The Millions, Atticus Review, Antioch Review, Solstice, and other places. He resides in White Plains, New York, and teaches philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx.