stale fortune cookies!
how the hell does that happen
the Chinese guy on El Camino
Real always turned a crisp business and aw
comon
he always dropped a handful or
better of cookies into the brown paper take-out bag and
the take-out bag always threw
itself at the grease sneaking out of one of the white
waxed-paper cartons
keeping the cellophane-wrapped
cookies unsullied
stale fortune cookies
what was this world coming to
he could feel his inner Wicked
Witch of the East melting melting
Im melting melting Oh what a World what a World I feel my wickedness
melting melting
Arrrgh
maybe it wasnt that bad
maybe it was just an imprudent
reaction juxtaposed by his Shockd Despondent brain
maybe
a tad over-the-top
stale fortune cookies
their fortunes couldnt be
fortuitous
#1 “You
are the center of every gropes attention”
she snapped the fortune out of
his hands “You need glasses . . . the
center of every groups attention”
“I like mine better”
#2 it was
hers “You will win success in whatever
calling you adopt”
winning success and adopting
their shared exasperated expressions
were enough
she wouldnt concede to the
cookie
she gave it to him to eat
and as everyone knows - from
a soul-eater - if you dont eat your cookie you dont get
its fortune
#3 “You lead a useful life no matter what riches
are coming to you” hers too
he was stoked she was going to
be wealthy
but ever the esquire she remarked that no matter what riches are
coming isnt a promise of wealth
look who was conceding now
he conceded she was correct
all that beauty and sensuality
and sensitivity yet some thing threw
intellect into the mix to ruin the batch
#4
hed become so despondent over
the stale fortune cookies that this one he tossed into his
mouth - to
eat it to get it over with - forgetting to extract its fortune
it wound its way around his
tongue and was mashed by his molars
he dug at it with his tongue and
recognizing its texture he realised what hed done
it came out in three mangled pieces
he unballed them unfurled them
scraped cookie off them
#4 Part 1
You
comfor
Part 2
are goin
table old
Part 3
g to have a very
age
it would be hard to become
belligerent with this fortune
and he had to concede it was
better to have read from here than later not
that later would really have existed
“Masticate masticate You should
chew your food one hundred times before swallowing” his mother chewing on his
ear during his youth
though she had other reasons
for him to chew and savor his food
they didnt have much
they didnt have second portions
there were lotsa siblings
he was the eldest
but he was struck
a bit of a low blow he felt
when he was out of the house
and then returned and his younger siblings were eating well and fattened
as hed opted to become an
involved and accomplished dinner speaker so his conversation would mask that he
wasnt chewing one hundred times before swallowing
he unabashedly asked “Are you chewing one hundred times before you
swallow”
they laughed
he wondered if they could count
to one hundred
“No Why would we do that”
he looked to the foot of the
table at his mother
then to his right to the head
of the table at his father
they took in his queried look
but returned their eyes to their meals
his father doled out a third
helping to his porcine youngest brother
“I seem to remember a time” he said “when that was canon”
“Cannon” his youngest brother
said over his heaping fork
“Canon”
“Thats what I said cannon”
and he was done talking he
shoveled his fork into his mouth
its proper enclave
he recognized
in that memory
why he ate the stale fortune
cookies
stale was a state of mind
waste not want not
"My Gawd the shit that comes
down from ones childhood My old age better be fucking comfortable"
1326, Moanday,
23 9. 13
