PEPPER DEMONSTRATION
Before terrorists can slay my family at our breakfast
nook, I suggest we all go up into the remodeled attic
for spicy crackers because I need to
control our final ten minutes on earth — plus
Grandpops designed a Honduran mahogany grinder
I’m desperate to show off to people who mean business.
We climb the ladder Dad talked down in price
from the Werner company, each rung multi-hued to
represent Rainbow Eucalyptus. I remind Mom’s ghost
Dad spent hours on the phone with a pregnant Australian
customer service agent and Dad can only talk so long
about human gestation, Noosa National Park.
Hungry militants discover my stash of severely expired
discontinued AnaCon brand Wheat Nuts jar.
They choose cog and hotdog bun shapes, filter flat
germ pieces to the bottom like fallen Clinker bricks.
That’s how I eat them also. October’s sun
swells. Top story sawdust iotas look galactic.
There’s our Pink Panther insulation. Warm and dry,
it’s kept us going on six falls, which means Chiclets
my sister swallowed when we moved in haven’t digested.
Maternally, I load Tellicherry Black corns like tiny skulls
into the tube to spite red dawn. My wrist crank
technique allows pungent stipple to cover the risen
herbal portion of the Jamaican Excelsior water biscuits’
docking holes. I serve with Solomon Gundy dip.
My baby brother offers to teach the assemblage
Dravidian linguistics, but they indicate it’s high time
to die. Glowing insulation is good, not great.
We pick the spot beside the Honeywell
Surround space heater. They flick it off. I turn it
on. They unplug. I recommend reconnection.
Jeffrey Hecker was born in 1977 in Norfolk, Virginia. He’s the author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011) & the chapbooks Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013), & Before He Let Them Guide Sleigh (ShirtPocket Press, 2013). Recent work has appeared in Mascara Literary Review, Atticus Review, La Fovea, Zocalo Public Square, The Burning Bush 2, LEVELER, Spittoon, & similar:peaks. He holds a degree from Old Dominion University. He resides with his wife Robin.
Curator: Lisa A. Flowers is a poet, critic, vocalist, the founding editor of Vulgar Marsala Press, and the author of diatomhero: religious poems. Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, elimae, Tarpaulin Sky, The Collagist, and other magazines and online journals. Raised in Los Angeles and Portland, OR, she now resides in the rugged terrain above Boulder, Colorado. Visit her here or here.