A View From The Mop

Pre-Orders? & I Eat Air (august)

By Jove "Lanky" Lank

I push the trash along the floor, my broom straight and all these goddamn things all over the floor. Paper cuts and holes, these little dots of stupid punched paper, trash from fast food and all the things they eat here, nothing left for me tonight, no half-sandwiches out on the desks for me to bite.

I clean up their own mess because these pigs here, they don’t know what mud is. Roll around in it pigs, Monica and I will keep your pens clean. This is how we make sense of us, Monica and me, pushing brooms and mops around.

And what I am seeing tonight in all the shit and filth, it is more money more money more money. I was seeing checks the other week, weeks ago, all these checks for a contest, for some panty-waist writer reader to read up all this writing, wishing I had the money in my pockets. But tonight, looking for food to swallow down, what I see are all the order sheets for the next big book coming out, for the next book by the next big asshole, the next novel from some kind of kid in new york pretending he is as poor as we are, Monica and me, eating cheese sandwiches by candle-light, pretending it is romance, chewing with our mouths half open.

Money for something that doesn’t exist, money for a book not even made yet. All this money from people who want to wear a concert t-shirt to the goddamn show, prove they knew the band when you could drinks beers back down your throat with them on stools during an intermission, them playing for the whole night booked up for a six-pack off the ice and a square of table to set their CDs on. That kind of thing.

And tell me, how do I get that gig? How do I get people to hand over their few dollars for something that doesn’t even exist, for something I haven’t made yet, just on the thought that I will? How does that work? It would be a goddamn miracle. Like eating air and getting filled up. Jesus H. Christ, mercy on us please, sometime.