A pimple-faced teenager is rifling through boxes of books at his neighbor’s yard sale. He looks over his reading list for the upcoming school year. His neighbor, a dangerous sounding woman wearing a winter jacket with a fake fur collar and metallic copper makeup, haggles over the price of an old toaster oven. Momentarily distracted by the boy, she pulls the list from his hand. She says, "you won’t find those here,” and returns the paper while wagging her other finger. “Nothing you should be reading either, if I have anything to say about it." He quickly stuffs the list into his back pocket. "You tell your mama I’m running for school board and I’ll be counting on her vote." — BRIAN PILLING
Brian Pilling has been published in The Main Street Rag, The Berkshire Review, Down In The Dirt, The Droplet Journal and other literary journals. His chapbook The Poet’s Struggle is published by Bottlecap Press. He is a recent winner in The Cape Cod Times poetry contest. His writing is inspired by his grandfather Germoglino Saggio — an immigrant poet of note, whose work is housed at the University of Minnesota.