When the last 50’s-inspired 1980s burger joint shut its doors, the city scrubbed forty years' worth of paint from above the front door, and in its place, someone sharpied bag of dicks ➤ Each independent gas station houses a two-room store with the cheapest Marlboro's for thirty miles, and on restock days, they throw in a warm Coke if you pay with cash. ➤ The prettiest lady works the return desk at Costco, and you know she’s the prettiest because every three weeks, a different bag boy pays for her acrylics’ fill and roots cover-up. ➤ Only visitors and bleeding hearts slow for roadkill: the school bus backs over the same squirrel twice to the squeals and jeers of fifth graders learning how to bury their empathy. ➤ Once, a pregnant snapping turtle waddled into your father’s garden to deliver, then bury her eggs, so he erected a fence of golf tees and chicken wire to protect them till warmer weather. ➤ Every summer three couples leave the neighborhood with their Havenese’s and Shih Zhu’s, whose names they pronounce like mushrooms or undesirables, Volkswagen's a caravan. ➤ Our cheerleaders wear turtlenecks and spandex that render them pencils with training bras, and when they tumble, Mr. Smith taps his clipboard and says they look smart. ➤ Your friend tells you that his grandmother was a war general in their country, which you believe because her posture could waterboard backpacks, and now she sleeps in the spare room. ➤ In elementary school, you bond with the other new kid, so she invites you to her mom’s nail salon to share curly fries and learn new words for colors: indian red, màu đỏ, lady scarlett. ➤ Instead of painting over the caricature your high school claimed as representation, white mothers stuff their sons into feather hats, and every weekend, the crowd roars go [        ] ➤ When they painted enough stripes on pale faces to feel shame, the school dubbed our new saviors the longhorns, shuttled from prairie to pen, but no one here has met a longhorn or an ➤ When asked to define this place, you cannot picture a town any more than a flooded creek or four Applebees or a pet hospice co-renting with a Dollar Tree, so you name the area code ➤ Five numbers for each way you do not know yourself or your neighbors, but this is your thing: consume and remember, forget and comply, scrape away the name and give someone else ➤ The sharpie still rests on the sidewalk where I learned how to blow bubblegum and stayed for hours when we got locked out of the house, so below the dicks, I scribble I was here. Someone. 

Julien Griswold thinks insurance agencies should cover notebook costs as therapy expenses. When they aren’t laying their thoughts bare in said notebooks, they study at Brown University. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, The /temz/ Review, Poetry Online, and elsewhere. Connect with them online @cheerupjulien.

Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. He is one of America's most renowned artists and known for his skill in capturing American life and landscapes through his art.