I’m inventing a new way of being a person that transcends having to try so hard. It’s half being sensitive to the moods of animals and half being honest about your confusion in unfamiliar supermarkets. You don’t know where the salad dressing is and that hurts. My presentation at the co-working space was a smash, meaning afterward people smashed the windows with rocks. A woman grabbed my arm and told me she had a new way of building bridges that transcends connecting two land masses with steel beams. Armies will always want to storm them; defenders will always blow them up out of love of country. Her parents were a raging river and a deadly gorge, so she would know. She explained it to me without using geometry, the fastest way to my heart. When I saw her next, she was squatting behind the island in the communal kitchen, her eyes on the dynamite, her hands on the plunger.
Jeffrey Hermann's poetry and prose has appeared in Okay Donkey, Heavy Feather, UCity Review, trampset, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father, husband, and doggy daddy (Hi, Teddy!) to be rewarding beyond measure.