ISSUE: Winter 2022
I was sitting at a banquet table before the awards ceremony.
A distinguished character actor, who narrated the PBS documentary
I saw last night, entered the banquet hall in a white jacket.
He was a server. I was about to ask Are you him? when he fired
a Swedish meatball at my head. I could tell it was a Swedish meatball
because of the cream sauce. He fired another one and another one.
Most of them missed, but some dripped down my forehead and my neck.
I wondered why this actor kept throwing Swedish meatballs at me,
why they weren’t papas rellenas, fried potato balls stuffed with ground
beef, the Puerto Rican meatball smuggled inside a crunchy potato.
I woke up cackling. My wife stared at me, as she so often does.
She wanted to know why I was laughing in my sleep. I need to be
heavily sedated. I need more pills, flying at me like Swedish meatballs.
