William Doreski
Today I've arrested myself for decay. Yes, I know that Jack Kerouac was also charged with that disorder. But his came about through hard drinking, which I couldn't sustain. My decay is more private than my liver and pancreas. It seats itself in a gland that scientists haven't yet discovered. Maybe not everyone bears this gland. I don't know. A railroad bridge over a swirl of river. A freight train slashes across the bridge. This is a unit train, a mile of shipping containers pulled by a pair of six-thousand horsepower diesels. I inhale their rich exhaust, ripened by effort. Despite its tremendous weight, this train must be going seventy miles an hour. With a little foresight I could have caught it in the yard, crawled into one of the containers after respectfully breaking the seal. But I missed my opportunity and must remain here in a state of decay that reeks like an abandoned sewage plant. That's the gland, you see. It makes itself known. As I start walking toward our village jail, the train disappears into the folded landscape.
Mary Cresswell
The problem started with Yaakob's main backup, the day he sneaked out
to do extra pressups in the gym that opened in one of the walkups. A gut-
wrencher, she reckoned, much more than a hiccup.
She said, it's not just your everyday cockup but the tip of the iceberg, a
virtual wakeup. He'd assembled that morning the client's last mockup,
gone out to defend it, walked into a dustup.
And finally, she said, it's the ultimate fuckup, no way around it without
doubling the markup, plus weeks if not months till the very last wrapup.
But then, she said, what the hell, it's a chance for a pissup - beer and
more beer, then burgers with catsup. And I thought, yeah right, with gin
for a topup. But you get what you pay for, at the end just like startup.
So I wished her good luck and got set for the mopup.
