High-budget B-list post-modern horror-comedy

Arden He

Somebody I loved walked into Taco Bell where the people’s hearts beat clang clang in mute horror and lunacy

& the flesh-eating bacteria had captured the capitol building & the navy pantsuits had hollowed out the banks that once held our debt flesh sweat & tears

& we were all forgiven.

Stalled to grief instead of moved to it, is how the Midwest-emo drive-through guy puts it. But the man I loved calls it atrocious joy instead.

Tell me, he said, what did Nikolai Gogol, Cixous Medusa, & God all have in common? They howled into the dark until their stomachs hurt, until tears peeled off their cheeks and they threatened to pee. BY MY WILL I WILL I LAUGH says Gogol’s gravestone, and I will. They’re making sadness a crime, well I’m no criminal baby. I’ve been taking iPhone videos of strangers just in case they do something I can monetize. & at night I curl on my bare bedroom floor under my collectible North Face without guilt, listening to the city burn.

Somebody I loved is selling his mom’s ring to buy a hyperlink to a number to a fragment of a picture in the ether. He’s getting a good deal. With the rest of the money he’s getting a crunchwrap, which he’s using to propose, and I’m going to say yes.