April Flash Fiction: Audrey Hepburn by Joseph Reich
Audrey Hepburn
Joseph Reich
women are noble getting their outfits ready the night before
my wife with her audrey hepburn striped turtleneck
and cords draped over the hamper
for her lovely and holy job as a substitute teacher in the elementary school
for all those half-crazed delinquents and everyone knows her in the neighborhood
nobody knows me…
and i’d be lucky just to make it through a night of nightmares
having to fight back like a drunken bukowski against all the freakin’ phantoms
using tourette’s to my full advantage
as even the devils try to creep in there
like hitchcock’s infamous portly silhouette pushing me up against the passengers
and that very well-groomed, thin asian man with his
cattle prod to prove that i am the ultimate stranger
(when i went to social work school to get my masters
i had a full pile of dirty clothes and what i thought clean clothes
on the floor and would sniff each one before i headed to yeshiva.
there was a body punching bag hanging from the ceiling my fiancee
and present day wife would bump into before she relieved herself
practically every evening, and so cute would ritualistically throw jabs
at it expressing how it drove her crazy and what was it doing there)
women are so noble and will get their clothes ready the night before
like audrey hepburn’s striped turtleneck and cords draped over the hamper.
Joseph Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and twelve year old son in the high-up mountains of Vermont. He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated seven times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books in poetry and cultural studies include, “A Different Sort Of Distance” (Skive Magazine Press) “If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge” (Flutter Press), “Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half” (Brick Road Poetry Press), among others.