Bloated :oR: The Body River
by f. Simon Grant

MY MOTHER USED to say, when she met someone from out of town, “Our river is full of the bloated bodies of dead poets.” That's the place I was born into, it was part of my birth. “The last place I lived,” my mother would call it, though she never moved away.
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When you first meet God he’ll attempt to make a joke, so laugh only to humor him. It'll probably be something like he told me, “How do Angels greet each other? Halo!” After first arriving at the Golden Gates—not so golden—he'll invite you inside his house for some sweet tea. Drink exactly one and a half glasses so he knows you aren’t being polite. Some topics of conversation to avoid would be questions about your past life like: Was I a good person? Did people love me? How many times did I whistle the tune to “Funkytown?" Questions like these only bore him. Topics God enjoys are Beanie Babies, The Voice, and the films of Sergei M. Eisenstein.

Please keep in mind this is not a story, nor a poem. Even so I will reveal a portion of myself in a way you can see and feel but not touch. Be patient with me, for it has indeed been a long while since I've shown myself, through my Craft of Pen and Paper.

As an artist I am compelled to write what I feel and feel what I write. If a reader can find oneself reaching out with one's heart and mind to what the artist is bringing to light, if even only for a moment, a bond is shared.

For an artist with neither acceptance nor appreciation is only someone who writes with pen and paper. His words and feelings are as dust in the wind and the emptiness thereof.