It’s Friday. The pool of water around the toilet is back and glistens for the third time in as many months. It’s also Lent. The McDonald’s app has a deal for Fish Filet sandwiches while the tide creeps farther across the bathroom floor. The guy who lives in the room behind me walks by. Says he has no idea what happened to the toilet. Likes his Fish Filets plain—no mayo or tartar sauce, just fish and a steamed bun—a regular thing on Fridays during Lent. He always slams the bathroom door, sometimes almost every hour. I feel the floor vibrate under my office chair. Like a whale breaching to arc and half-somersault, crashing past porcelain to the deep. Does this guy dream of whales while he toddles mostly asleep in the middle of the night, waking everyone else as he slams the bathroom door? Do I dream he’s the one slamming the door when it’s actually a whale tapping a little too hard with fluke or tail? I order three Fish Filets, one plain, on the McDonald’s app. FISH. It’s also an acronym: Fuck It, Shit Happens.

Poet’s Note

I have lately been delving into satirical dictionary definitions for my own entertainment. One of my MFA professors, Patty Seyburn, cautioned that poems that simply railed against someone’s negative traits were a disservice to writer and subject. Injecting a level of fantasy helped steer me away from that potential pitfall. I discovered the acronym FISH through the Facebook page Fucktology. It is also listed on allacronyms.com:
https://www.allacronyms.com/FISH/Fuck_It%2C_Shit_Happens

Bio: Jonathan Yungkans