Down by the Riverside

by Joanna Penn Cooper and Todd Colby

It is a vulgar error to assume the things you see there

were put in the mud just for you.  You'll be dead soon
enough, and you can think about it then, how a certain
percentage of the population walks around reading

your mind like it was an ad for laser surgery on the A train.

I won't even mention the ghosts who wait for you outside
the bathrooms of historic homes, but I just did so: there

are ghosts outside bathrooms of historic homes waiting

just for you. Go to them but come to me first: I have the drugs,

the good ones for your alienation. But don't be alarmed, you

have the option of paying a different fee, like joining a cult

to help you with your thinking or playing the hero and feeling

your feelings all the time. But I digress; in fact, I'll be frank

and positive. I'll be so frank and positive it will mildly terrify

the people around me who don't quite see things my way.

That's what the river is for: wrapping my friends

in light gauze and tossing them into the water.