Looking for Some Action
By Katie Gene Friedman
Across the street from my parents’ second-story window,
firefighters opened a bar, naming it after a corrupt
political organization. Suddenly: brawls in the street,
the Bridge and Tunnel shoving each other in the path
of taxis, horn honks and Pauly D accents. We blessed
with free-for-view ringside seats. Around the hour
laugh tracks and news anchors gave way to the Psychic
Friends Network, Pure Moods, innovative mops
with money back guarantees. A befuddled white man
looking for some action, my dad would phone the dispatcher.
Stutter, unconvincingly, “I… I dunno, they could,
they could have a gun!” The blip-blip of sirens
stimulating his salivary glands, though the resolution
was predictably the same: no one in uniform would dare
wrist-slap their drinking buddies.
Katie Gene Friedman (she/her) is a queer, invisibly disabled high school dropout and healthcare worker, who enjoys musing on the indignities of having a body. Her nonfiction chapbook Foreign Body is out with Future Tense Books. Katie’s words appear or are forthcoming in Foglifter, Peach Mag, Portland Review, Maudlin House, Hobart, and elsewhere. On social media she goes by @ValleyGirlLift.