After my manager asks, if the job isn’t done then why are you heading home?

Daniel J Flosi

I reconstruct the day: tell him how the electrical contractor
completely fucked up a run of wire. &
that The Cretaceous period drew to a close, like a curtain,
with an audience. & that I heard that Cambridge
University was constructed around 1208 CE.
But what may surprise you more is that scholars and clergy
mingled & spoke over ales.
I also know that scholars were considered peasants, though
a higher class; meaning they were less likely to sustain
a skull fracture. But for the farmer, the baker, or women
fractured lines tell the story the rose told; the body is a basket weaver,
weaving skeletal stories & the fishmonger’s wife sews the seasons.
I know too, how ordinary people, once here, now there,
stand like bricks after the fire, telling the story
of how the house burned down.
But I won’t tell him that I also know that I can
derail conversations by telling stories.

Daniel J Flosi sometimes thinks they are an apparition living in a half-acre coffin within the V of the Mississippi and Rock Rivers. Daniel is a poetry reader at Five South, and is the founder/EiC of Black Stone / White Stone. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Funicular Magazine, Olney Magazine, Rejection Letters and many more. His chapbook Cries, the Midnight Sky is forthcoming (2023) with Bullshit Lit. Drop a line @MuckerMaffic