TBBD
The year is 2022. People wear identities like double-spiked armor, cuts both ways. COVID germs look like tiny Bumble Balls, remember those? A 90s toy, a ball with blunted spikes, motor vibrating its bounce chaotic. I once saw a professional juggler contend with one, an audience-given challenge. It threw him off his axis, spiky ball jiggling while he was juggling.
Calling it Tiny Bumble Ball Disease is more fun than COVID. TBsquared, apropos of a killer lung virus, then D for Death, Disaster. Or TBD with a stutter of uncertainty, To B-Be
Determined, since Dunno what will happen. Maybe we’re all spiky balls jiggling with who
knows what juggling. Spiky balls with spiky armor, cutting both ways.
***
Summered as a Verb
Hanging out with rich people when
you’re not rich at
one of those restaurants that
serves tiny architectural marvels is like
is my shirt tucked in? is it is it? ah good yes but
okay look nonchalant now don’t
keep checking it oh
shit oh shit what even is that dish just
brought to the table which utensil do I
use
shit fuck
oh okay good one of the rich people didn’t know
either asked the server, phew, others laugh like
how could you not know that like
ah yes, we ate that in Mallorca every summer
growing up, oh no way you
summered there once too?!
Summered as a verb is what hanging out
with rich people is all about.
Maybe now that you don’t have to be the one
to ask about the food that doesn’t even look like
food and plus, your shirt’s tucked in
you skim close for comfort
take on the persona of the gritty, worldly friend
stand up for the downtrodden during dinner
and the rich people listen
look concerned, but when your back is
turned, when you’ve popped out to the loo and struck up
conversation with the server to show you’re not
stuck up
not
one of them
the rich people forget your existence
and that of all other non-rich people too.
***
As a performer and art model, Goldie Peacock spent over a decade bouncing between frenetic movement and absolute stillness before chilling out and becoming a writer. Their stories, essays, and poems appear or are forthcoming in HuffPost, Wild Roof Journal, Sundog Lit, (mac)ro(mic), Bullshit Lit, and DRAGS, a book showcasing NYC’s drag superstars. They live in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY, USA). You can find them on both Instagram and Twitter @goldiepeacock.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 