This Isn’t Worth The Ink

This isn’t a poem. I’ve never written a poem before. You’re crazy.

This is a duck, a mallard man with a beetle for a head. You’re holding him, this

Fowl fellow with a yellow beak, as one might hold a hoagie, ready to bite, and

You complain about his lyricism? You’re crazy. Your brain is on strike, protesting

Working conditions, a little tiny thousand-neuron black lung march

With little tiny thousand-neuron National Guardsmen on their way to break it up.

The tiny working man has thrown off his tiny chains and extended his tiny

Still-raw hands in tiny kindness, and you critique his verse? You’re crazy.

Your stomach’s in your fingers and that is why you’re holding this avian American,

Thumbs salivating, because through feral eyes this is all just

A hoagie with mayo and mustard.

William Bittner is a high school senior from Birmingham, Alabama. He enjoys writing absurdist essays and short stories. He has been published in fingers comma toes, Crashtest, and others, and has been recognized by the Alabama Writers' Forum.

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