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In A Nut Shell
Somehow I wandered into the parking lot of a big hardware store. Hardware World, I think. Home Universe. Outside and lying on pallets were parts and pieces you could pick up and literally use to make a home: fences, huts, paving stones, young trees—all lined up outside. Inside? More. You could build a world. And along the edge of the parking lot were a bunch of canvas canopies with people standing around these big drum barbeques. The air was full of the smell of barbequed food, and the canopies had signs hanging on them advertizing sauces and restaurants. Alligator Hot Sauce. Bayou Delight. Fat Boy’s Barbeque. I’m not fat. Not with my nerves. But I made my way over to Fat Boy’s. The guy there looked like he must be Fat Boy. He had a ponytail and a little goatee. “What can I get?” I asked him.
“Nothin’, now. We’re shutting down.” A big gust of wind hit and the canvas started flapping. Little flyers were blowing away, and he reached out and caught a few but let the rest go.
“No food?”
“Nope. There was a cook off, but it’s over. We’re shutting down.” He was just sitting there, papers tumbling around him.
“But it’s only…” I didn’t know what time it was. But there was going to be no food from Fat Boy or anyone else.
“Yep,” Fat Boy said, “We’re just going to clean up and hope the wind doesn’t blow the canopy away.”
I wandered off through the crowded parking lot. People were coming and going. People were loading their cars with lumber, buckets of paint, lamps, ceiling fans, you name it. The whole universe in a warehouse. And I overheard one woman say to a man, “I don’t know if it’s the dimmer switch or the bulb, but that buzzing’s going to drive me insane.”
Douglas Cole has had work in The Connecticut River Review, Louisiana Literature, Cumberland Poetry Review, and Midwest Quarterly. He has work available online as well in The Adirondack Review, Salt River Review, and Avatar Review. He has work forthcoming in the Cortland Review and Underground Voices. He won the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry for a selection of work called, “The Open Ward.” He lives in Seattle, Washington and he teaces writing and literature at Seattle Central College, where he is also the advisor for the literary journal, Corridors.
Email: Douglas Cole
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