DOES THIS MAKE ME LOOK FAT?

 a story of desperation

 

“What?” she inquired.

“I said, you look nice today,” he answered.

“I heard what you said the first time. I just like hearing it.” 

 

He was exhausted. Every time he complimented her, she asked what he had said.

Only to tell him that she heard the compliment the first time.

 

Of course, there was no woman standing before him, or no woman on the phone, or no woman on skype.

 

Just the brick façade above his fireplace. A man yapping at his wall.  Not uncommon.  Lotsa folks have conversations with their walls.

 

But few think their walls fish for compliments.

 

TRUTH BE DAMNED, CREMATION BECKONS 

 

“Rekha, please open the door," Nee said to her maid.  Her blind date had arrived.

She had never told him how obese, and unattractive, and old she was.

 

Didn’t matter to her though, she was expecting Death to arrive at her door.  She was 98, after all. It was time.

 

 

SHOULD THE BEDWETTER SING, IF THE BEDWETTER COULD

 

For the bedwetter singy 

the steamed 

fucking songs

and

chordsy

his fucking throat

was it weekly

no he said screwing himself

to wretch music

would demand too much fucking effort

like cumming cummy goo

but it was the music

it was always about the music

 

(Ashok Rajamani is a writer, poet, and artist in New York City.  He is a member of the Authors Guild, New York Writers Coalition, South Asian Journalist Association, and is nationally recognized in Poets & Writers Directory of American Poets.   His memoir, "BRAIN KARMA," will be published by Algonquin Books in 2011. For more info: www.ashokrajamani.com)