| Thunder Sandwich #17
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 dweeb by jeff filipski |
| The Millionaire Next Door My neighbour's wardrobe is a stack of T-shirts counted out like banknotes ready for deposit. He clips the coupons from Wednesday's paper and comes to us for more, but only if we never dine at the all-you-can-eat restaurant that offers two for one. For hours he cuts around the dotted lines. He speaks two languages: English and percentage, but he pays full price to the Mexicans who cut his lawn and for the wine he shares on his front porch when the days are long and the company is relaxed. His house is a box filled with shadows and statistics from which he watches us all come and go, ever curious to know where we are going and why, while everyone on the street wonders, the way people do, what he does for a living, secretly jealous of his leisure time. And when his lamp burns late into the night we feel a little sorry that he lives alone in the counting house of insomnia. Downtime Every hour passes twice at bus stops and the airport; once to wait and once to make a deal, long distance, tell the captives caught before departure about former husbands, lawyers, problems with schooling daughters, or complain that Albuquerque is the asshole of the planet and it's all because of Mexicans. I try not to listen, but absorb the surroundings, as a pond where reflections sink to the bed, and be still. It feels like walking through a glass door without breaking it. |
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| ISSN: 1534-4037 |
Edited by Jim Chandler & Haze McElhenny
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