Anthropologist by Kenneth Pobo

Leon D. Slinger finished his Anthropology doctorate but decided a life in academia didn’t suit him. By the time he turned forty, he figured that no life suited him. He wasn’t lazy, but the job world felt like a hard pillow sure to cause constant neck aches.

To pay the bills, he took various jobs, anything from waiter to check-out clerk at CVS. His mother had left the family when Leon was seven. His father died when Leon was forty-one. And left him scads of money. Leon quit working and decided to think for the rest of his life. For no purpose. It was his entertainment.

He came to the conclusion that the world could be this way, the world could be that way, but the elm tree isn’t saying. Leaves overrun it in spring and dash away in fall—so much for loyalty.

Facing old age, alone as he had always been, he sits on his back porch and tells his cats, Emmylou and Barker, that he’s waiting for a hit of Enlightenment. He wants it tart like a January grapefruit. It’s a long wait.

Patience, he practices and practices, hurries away into the overly carpeted house with no pictures hanging anywhere. He suspects nothing will happen and removes the last mirror from the wall.

© 2011 Kenneth Pobo

Kenneth Pobo has a new chapbook of micro-fiction out from Deadly Chaps called Tiny Torn Maps. His chapbook of poetry, Ice And Gaywings, won Qarrtsiluni’s 2011 chapbook contest and came out in November 2011

Comments are closed.