Warning: Images of partial baldness and baldness angst. May trigger pre-baldness anxiety.
Warning: Casual, even provocative usage of Italian and gratuitous references to nudist classical painters with a glaring fetish for muscular dudes. May trigger dramatic romance language insecurity and the uneasy feeling that you are just not smart enough for this thing.
Warning: Massive ambiguity, especially regarding who is “you”? May trigger excessive head-scratching.
Warning: Multiple irregular stanzas and early unprotected pastiche protuberances. May trigger feelings of poetic nausea.
Warning: Are there multiple and excessive rhetorical questions? Why yes. May trigger excess questioning and stir the reader to hide their head beneath pillow.
Warning: Images of dying insects. Also death snickering. Also drowning. And patients metaphorically spread slash drugged on tables after perhaps poorly executed anesthesia. Multiple triggers here!
Warning: Speaking of “and.” Prepare yourself for lots of “ands.” Sometimes the “ands” even begin sentences, which goes against what you learned in eleventh grade English class. May trigger fear of compound sentences.
Warning: Heavy motifs of unmediated and unmedicated depression, aging hesitations to eat pleasurable tree fruit. Also questionable trousers. May trigger trouser shaming and that uncomfortable feeling of excess roughage.
Warning: Some of the trousers are seemingly made of flimsy fabrics; white after Labor Day happens here, also. May trigger laughter that bleeds into mockery.
Warning: Massive feline imagery contained within poor lung conditions (yellow smoke, yellow fog). May trigger reminiscences of old cats of yore.
Warning: Multiple Biblical slash Shakespearean allusions, some of which force you to refer back to your college textbooks. May trigger excessive Googling and rushing feelings of inadequacy.
Warning: Excessive ellipses usage contained within. May trigger ellipses xenophobia.
Warning: Cigarette usage referenced. Also prostitution. May trigger lung shaming.
Warning: Quasi British-centric references contained within (toast, tea, massive sexual repression). Cultural appropriation? You be the judge. May trigger sarcastic and overly quivery British accents if reading the poem aloud.
Warning: Shawls, oodles of shawls and images of implicit joint stiffness. May trigger feeling that you need some Ben Gay and fast.
Warning: Disturbing unhygienic images present (sawdust, oyster shells). May trigger bouts of elongated hand washing.
Warning: Partially nude (also mute?) Mermaid language present at poem’s conclusion. May trigger questioning of where are the Mermen. Also Mermaid allergies.
Warning: Exposed female epidermis present along with references to perfume. May trigger muted sexual excitement
Warning: Repetition. Repeat: lots and lots of repetition. May trigger skipping lines dramatically.
Warning: You may fall asleep as a result of said repetition. May trigger making a pot of coffee.
Warning: Or stab yourself in the head with your pencil. May trigger trip to hospital.
Warning: Or suffer a papercut from the ecologically destructive paper. May trigger Band-Aid application.
Warning: Unrelenting sadness and whining. May trigger calling this thing depressing and moving on to the next reading.
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Nathan Leslie won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his satirical collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. He is also the series editor for Best Small Fictions and the editor of the Maryland Literary Review. He is the author of fourteen books including Van Boyle, A Fly in the Ointment, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, South Dakota Review, Lake Effect and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.