Wanted:
Daniel Tobin
A fire in the belly. Joints that
stink of gasoline. Empty highways
where you can speed. A series of curves
to bite like meat. Nostalgia like
pistachio shells, never worth the
blisters. Hip bones you can chart
like canyons. Some will label you
greedy, calling for your boyhood
when there are bills to pay, politicians
to ridicule. They’ll dust off expensive
bottles of whiskey, collect happy hours
around the waste. Admire the simplicity
of cats, the fluctuating ticket prices of
golf courses. What coincidences led
to this difference in circuitry? Hard to say.
After all, your family tree is kinked with
impulse like a thinned out garden hose.
Parents that eloped, could skim addictions
with their index fingers and never knew
a bank account from a mattress. Perhaps
it was not enough hugs. Maybe it was
the kid that boiled your blood in math class.
Could have been the speech impediment
that put you in therapy, the gator that lived
underneath your bed. The first girl you kissed.
Perhaps, it was too many hugs. Have no fear.
There’s a place for people like us. I have yet
to find it but I know what it smells like. I’ll know it
by the stacks of unopened mail. $116 in unpaid taxes,
a luke-warm glass of Jim Bean,
we’ll chase girlies like it’s the 50’s and
ponder month-old milk like a well thought-out
conspiracy theory.
Daniel Tobin is an aspiring novelist and poet out in Los Angeles, CA. A fanatic of magic realism, he approaches every medium with a sense of metaphor and obscurity. Daniel has a degree in Film Production from Chapman University and currently works as marketing producer at a television network.