Elvis
Schmiedekamp
Stop
staring at me
from billboards and buses. Why do you torment me with those fatherly eyes
and implied promises of a sympathetic ear and a shining tomorrow in
exchange for my Social Security number?
Security.
You have it in abundance. I can’t buy milk without stumbling
over your offer of federally subsidized paradise.
Elvis
Schmieidekamp is listening.
Elvis Schmiedekamp wants you
to be happy. Elvis Schmiddekamp wants me
to be happy. Even if that means blowing
paycheck after paycheck
on gin and strippers with no interest building.
Elvis
Schmiedekamp, when
your eyes follow me down the street and I get creepy Orwellian chills
up my spine,
I tell myself it’s just my paranoid imagination. Clutching the remnants
of my college fund in one hand, your colossal balding grayscale head in
the other,
you have only my well being in mind;
You
can’t see the roach in my pocket.
You don’t want to hear the dirty, inane, subversive,
thoughts that spin through my head like roulette wheels on
biweekly Thursdays.
Elvis
Schmiedekamp,
You’re happy coming home at night to lukewarm pot roast and
children bouncing asphalt basketballs in split-level driveways.
When you cleared your mind
and asked yourself:
“What
does Elvis want for Elvis?”
the answer was as predictable
as a drying pen at an ATM
on the end of a short metal chain:
Elvis
wants everyone’s money, Elvis lives to serve.
Elvis is a human face on a floundering institution.
Elvis doesn’t live in three dimensions.
Shauna Rogan's work has been published by the Mississippi Review, Comet Magazine and Spike Magazine, among others. Her first chapbook -- Drinking, Dancing, Kissing, Yelling -- is available through her official site.