Shopping Cart
    items

      January 15, 2014Dead EndWilliam Trowbridge

      I’ve had it with movies where escapes go wrong,
      like when the assistant V.P. at the bank,
      who hates his job and has bought a ticket
      to Rio—where there’s no extradition treaty
      with the U.S.—is sneaking a million
      smackers out of the vault one night when he
      gets interrupted by the nosy cleaning lady
      and has to cool it till she mops her way
      upstairs, and then, after he finishes packing
      the money into a big suitcase, he tries
      to lug it inconspicuously to a cab that
      hits every damn red light on the way
      to the airport, where his flight’s been
      cancelled because of weather, meaning
      he may not get out of the country
      before they discover his brazen theft,
      which, with the cleaning lady’s help,
      they may have already done, making
      his life seem more and more like that dream
      where you’re running from the monster
      and aren’t really moving, but now
      another flight’s arrived just in time, though
      customs wants to talk to him about
      the 150-pound suitcase, which he explains
      contains cash his bank has to pay a Rio firm
      before Monday to get a fat contract
      and that the customs guy, who hates
      his job, too, decides, after some questioning
      and I.D. checking, not to investigate
      further, so that finally the coast looks clear,
      except the plane has a stopover in Houston,
      where the poor slob has second thoughts
      and flies back home to his caged-in life,
      where he sneaks the money back into the vault
      before Monday’s opening. Jesus, think of it:
      that lousy double-crossing bastard. Rio!

      from #40 - Summer 2013

      William Trowbridge

      “I was born in Chicago and grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in west Omaha. When I was a kid, I used to spend hours in my room building model airplanes. I later discovered that the then incomparable pleasure I experienced during that activity had at least something to do with Testor’s Extra Fast Drying Model Airplane Glue. It was probably also what caused me to fall for Doris Day one afternoon as she sang ‘Secret Love’ on my Philco. Later yet, I found that writing poems gave me a pleasure similar to the one I got building models, but with the added feeling of strong attunement to what Richard Wilbur calls this ‘bric-a-brac world’ and without the secret love and glue fumes.”