Is This Thing On?
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Is This Thing On?
We know this isn’t really going to fly[Some laughter can be heard] but we should tellThem that we’re doing all we can . . .It’s not as though we really told a lie,I mean, you know? Right? Well, just let it sell.We’ll be done before they . . . Hey, man,This is bullshit. I can’t fucking read this . . .He’ll do whatever we want. Tell them whatever.Make it up if you have to . . . losers. Yup.Wait a second. Is someone taking a piss? . . .You know? Fuck these people . . . wait, this thing on?[Flushing sound] . . . You know, I thought he’d neverShut the fuck up. Man, this shit’s really fucked up.You know what? Who fucking cares? We’ll be gone. [End Page 273]
ERNEST HILBERT is the author of Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan (selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize), and Last One Out. He lives in Philadelphia, where he works as a rare book dealer and book reviewer for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. His poem “Mars Ultor” was included in Best American Poetry 2018, and his poems appear in Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Parnassus, Sewanee Review, Hudson Review, Boston Review, The New Republic, American Scholar, and the London Review. Visit him at www.ernesthilbert.com
