Dear Nobody

GilbertAllen

It’s kind of liberating to realize nobody cares what you do—unless you kneel during The Star Spangled Banner, or kill yourself in spectacular fashion backflipping over the Edmund Pettus Bridge maybe, or saving yourself for the end of a high capacity magazine.

But if you’re not inclined to such melodrama, then you can do pretty much anything and even if you're caught your fellow nobodies will say What the hell, he’s only human I’ve seen worse and then return to watching a Titanic cockatoo on television, saying Believe me, swiveling his orange beak.

Gilbert Allen's most recent books are Believing in Two Bodies (a collection of poems) and The Beasts of Belladonna (a collection of linked stories). Since 1977 he has lived in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, with his wife, Barbara.