&5
by Simeon Berry
Your older brother composes laconic, heavily punctuated essays from the High Sierras about how he misses the torpor of popular culture.
They arrive written in meticulous spirals on the outside of cardboard boxes stuffed with antiseptic evergreen. His poetry contradicts itself—Sparrows perch on cattails…No, wait! They’re glued there!—and now he knows which plant will give you hypothermia.
It’s upsetting to hear him like this. You prefer his explanation of why Southside Sulfur Jim fretted his guitar with a knife and dreaded the petrified glare of the railroad bulls.
His instability is hip, an illness that lets him live in this world, whereas you need pentagrams to go off every minute like cherry bombs just to illuminate how to avoid getting beat up.
Your younger brother shakes his head as he sorts his hardcore record collection by value. Stick to algebra, okay?
