268. Ménage à Trois Lunch

I made two sandwiches. Of the same type: wheat bread, lettuce, tomato, red onion, mayonnaise, turkey. If you are a vegetarian or a vegan, I won't stand in your way. Replace the turkey, even the mayonnaise. It doesn't matter.

(Incidentally, for those of you expecting something else from this narrative, don't worry; it will arrive shortly.)

What does matter is I hadn't wanted two sandwiches. Distracted, I made a second one by accident. But now here they were, plated. Two lovely, alluring, and nourishing sandwiches.  What a privilege.  I felt profligate. I began to think of the situation as a ménage  à trois.

How sad is that?

Well, I ate lunch alone--à  un.

I finished one sandwich and gave up.

And that's when the two women wearing bikini bottoms only (I told you to be patient!) came into the apartment from poolside. It wasn't really my apartment. I was house-sitting, to some extent. All right: I was squatting. 

One woman was brown and black hair, and her name was Arli.  the other was white and had red hair, and her name was Cynthia. The former was as well endowed as Harvard, the latter as well as Princeton.

I told them, "I just made two sandwiches by mistake.  I hate that."

Arli said, "And I hate that I just dropped War and Peace into the pool--and it's the Peaver-Volkhonsky translation, too."  I saw that he book was not with her.  Apparently it had drowned. 

"There's no time to waste," said Cynthia.  "Arli, let's split the sandwich." I poured them glasses of white wine that did not belong to me. 

At some point, their remaining bikini parts fell, and eventually we had the kind of sex that's much appreciated, except all three of us were just a little burpy because of the sandwiches.  Red onion, you know. 


hans ostrom 2018

249. Dirk Deliwogg

I am Dirk Deliwogg, consulting poet, visionary, crafter of opinions, digger of holes, raconteur, and something of a legend.

I kind of hate stories even though I tell them when the work calls for it. That's about all the work calls for. People want to tell things and I listen.  They want to hear things in return. Ritual sayings like "the weather's been really weird lately." They want short comforting or alarming tales. And so on.

Relaxing at home (I'm a slow drifter, an artful squatter) with a glass of red--not wine, just the color red--I like it when a woman who is there (or not there) speaks in word-collages, such as "teek notoriety web-savvy certain cream-based personal responsibility agenda mais oui lime allergy connubial etch scar vivid zephyr, actually." I reply, "Indeed. Well put!!

Anyway, I am really nobody living in nothing, which, although nothing, is saturated with texts, symbols, and momentary tyrants. Great to meet you!


hans ostrom 2016

215. Details of the Break-Up

O my generalissima, your voice
sounded like a lactating chainsaw
as you commanded me out of your life.

I retaliated by not renewing my
subscription to Piquant Living
magazine. Also, I swallowed

the key to your place and put on
red slippers.  On the street,
I looked up to see my things

falling. They piled up in drifts
of shame. The pleather underwear
had been a gift from you.

People gathered and laughed.
I taught them a folk-dance.
And now it is later,

and I work at a drive-thru
mortuary and am studying
to become a fish-whisperer.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

214. Certain Assemblages

Certain assemblages of words are deemed, in certain assemblages of words, "genius" or "enduring" by critics.  And so assemblages of people think they should read these "enduring" assemblages of words so as to read what is read or red or blue or acceptable or green or what-one-is-supposed-to-know, after all.

The coagulation of assemblages is so petty, corrupt, and formidable that you just have to ignore and write or read or both or neither, and whoever heard of a reading list saving the world?  After all.