Featuring Jon Bennett

Super

“Help me clean the sidewalk,” 

says the super

He’s large and crazy

so I try to stay on his good side

We uncoil a hose in the basement

and feed it through a grate

to the street

“Just cleaning the sidewalk!” he says

I turn on the water

The first junkie he hits

swings a grocery bag at him

so he sprays her in the face

Then someone runs over

and takes a swing at him

and they get the hose too

Soon we’re all soaking wet

but at least the junkies are leaving

“Sometimes you got to 

clean out the filth,” says the super

and I nod but

I still feel dirty.

-

Sharko

Since he’d been a choir boy

he had a good shtick in the missions,

a week of good deeds

and they’d give him the keys

Then he’d rob the poor box

and go somewhere else

In New Mexico he hit a big score

and holed up 

in an Albuquerque flophouse

with 4 cases of Muscatel

He got esophageal hemorrhoids,

and gin blossoms, but the worst thing

were his feet

It was a rare condition 

called Charcot’s disease

(pronounced ‘Sharko’)

His feet swelled to the size 

of watermelons

and when they shrank back down

were permanently disfigured

Go ahead, look it up

it’s a thing

Since then everyone calls him ‘Sharko’

but he doesn’t rob

poor boxes anymore,

he’s too slow

to get away.

-

Leisure Town

My mom had lived there

so I should’ve felt bad about it

but I was too high to care

“We got one,” said Larry

he had the binoculars

An ambulance passed

and we watched from a block away

as the EMTs came out

with a lady on a gurney

followed by an old man

who talked to the driver 

and then went back inside

“Well...” said Larry

“Well...” I said

If the old man didn’t follow the ambulance

we were sunk

But then the garage opened

and the old man drove out

It was very unlikely

there were any other family members

but just to be sure

we knocked before

we went on in.

---

More of Jon Bennett's recent work can be found on sPARKLE+bLINK, The Rye Whiskey Review and Punk Noir Magazine.