After discussing Gogol for thirty intense minutes, the book club gathering takes a break, degenerates into a gossip-fest. This month’s fare? The mayor’s May-December romance caught on nanny cam. His suspicious wife put a spy fern in the master, aimed it at their king-size bed.
Your Pentecostal palm-waving interrupts the flock’s titter. “Beware of dating apps promising love,” you shout. “They’ll scrape you clean!” Several club members cross their legs at the mention of scraping.
Your street-preacher rant rolls on to see-no-evil algorithms and corrupt oligarchs. “They force serfs off Great Gatsby’s Curve, rack up fortunes by hit-and-run. We’re all Myrtle Wilsons now.” Only the last-minute guest thinks we’re finally circling back to Dead Souls. The rest know you’ve been gutted, your bank accounts trawled by a Christian soldier you fell for online.
poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Akitsu Quarterly, Contemporary Haibun Online, Failed Haiku: A Journal of English Senryu, Gone Lawn, Gyroscope Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Maudlin House, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Star 82 Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Unbroken Journal, and Whiskey Island. A few of her poems and prose pieces have also been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards.
