Editor

By Brannon O’Brennan

I always have depended on

Tobacco

something to remove

Alcohol

me from Earth

Sedatives

periodically.

Trifling fixes, secret

shots on the run with

Mentos chasers close behind.

Hardworking, Ambien entitled.

Never fully dysfunctioning

meant never having to stop.

Photos, plaques and

LinkedIn – artifacts of

a life well edited.

Don’t believe the stereotypes.

Dependence is not for the lazy.

Getting just right, not too much,

requires planning, focus and deception.

In this country, if you do some

important things well, you can

do a lot of other things poorly.

Be the nightmare who

pays his taxes on time.

I’ve considered whether I might

harbor a lazy, half-assed,

commitment to self-terminate.

Yes, commitment. What else can

you call decades of consistent

intimacy with known lethals?

Executing a top-secret plan to

keep it at a low level so that

something else

Respectable old

man death

gets me first. Mitigations

of exercise and vegetables.

Now, when I can edit

my autopsy report

on the front end.

My brother stopped making

revisions very young.

Oxycodone

I let a sleeping giant lie

about how he was doing

until one day we found the

purple and yellow version

of him under his puke.

So I think, what low odds

it happens to both of my

wheezing mother’s sons.

Lung cancer

Mine won’t be tragic if

I’ve done my job as the editor.

Ordinary suburban fizzle and

some old man aftersmoke like

when a bottle rocket underwhelms

its July 4 executioner.

You see what I mean by

half-assed commitment?

Not fully determined to

be here or be there.

Living liminality to

its fullest until the

Medical Examiner resolves

ambivalence and releases

the published version.

Brannon O’Brennan is a writer living in Northern Virginia, USA. His work has been published in Isele Magazine, Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections, and in The George Washington University Press. His literary fiction short story “Symbiosis” was published in Secant Publishing’s anthology, “Best Stories on the Human Impact of Climate Change,” and nominated for the Secant Publishing Prize. He has also published a short story collection through Alien Buddha Press. Find him on X at @brianbooklover