She said she wanted to go to the beach... (Philip Cherian

something my Id wants me to is to lick the cream between every bourbon biscuit and neatly arrange the biscuits back in and relish the cream slowly churning in my tongue and I don’t get bored ever because I am busy spinning chocolate around my coelacanth; and all you you can do is slaver and I wont even budge, and you will call me megalomaniacal and I you: a disturbing can of crap let loose which points at movies and say Nostalghia sucks. Or stab me at my heart littler than my first. What I dread is cardiomyopathy. You will gift me a chart with parts arrows showing diseases. Thriving till I feel skeletal that’s the way it works that’s the way the cookie crumbles. You won’t acknowledge of course; my wrists or knees. Nothing eats me like you do. Not nectarines. Not neophobia. I thought you you must know. Esp. before any pouncing the tiger asks, are you ready I am going to eat you. But you slink and sidle before my bloodshot eyeball and feast on my fish bones while children starve and die; where do you hide your shame in a pocket or a test tube I want to embalm it for later when you go see the time will snow and the time will snow and I will be here sleeping for you.

- Susan Harris, English (2009-12)

She said she wanted to go to the beach…

She said she wanted to go to the beach. I told her for the umpteenth time that it was a waste of time. She asked me why I was so against the beach, and I replied quite honestly that it was because of the sharks. She said I had nothing to worry about, since the sharks hadn’t bitten anyone at the beach for years. I replied that that was precisely the point. I mean what’s the use of going to the beach if you can’t see a decent shark-goringinnocent-beach-goer scene? She told me she didn’t know why she’d married me, and I reminded her that I was rich.

She told me that going to the beach would be a good way to spend the weekend. I told here there was nothing there that we couldn’t get in our backyard. She told me, yes there was and where was I going to get a beach in our backyard? I told her I’d leave the hose running and take some sand from the kitty-litter and spray it around. She told that would be different. I asked her how. She replied that, for a start, there wouldn’t be any salty air. I told her that I was willing to throw an entire bag of salt into the air. She told me to stop fooling around, and that the beach was a good place to enjoy oneself. I asked her but what of the sharks? She replied that there wouldn’t be any of them around, and I told her that it wouldn’t be much enjoyment without seeing anyone being eaten alive by sharks. She told me I was a perverted, sadistic man. I pointed out to her that her brother was a lawyer who’d be glad to handle a divorce.