#jpundercroft

I can sell you this poet for $500. A whole poet - it’s a screaming deal.

This roommate of mine was a poet, but nobody’d ever read any of his shit. He talked and talked about writing, and he was a very good critic. He even convinced me to stop writing and leave the world alone for about six months.

This poet, he wrote every day, on yellow sheets of paper, and put them in a cigar box under his bed. I know, because I saw him. I tried to look over his shoulder once while he was scratching and he screamed, like someone had stabbed him in his pudgy side. If you haven’t been stuck before you can’t know what that cry of pain sounds like inside your own head. So I didn’t try to read his work again, for fear of hurting him. Though on nights or hot afternoons when he wasn’t in the apartment the cigar box whispered to me like a cool seductress.

One day, this poet dies. Dropped dead on a bus for no reason, as far as I could tell.

I ran home then and erased his browser history and took all the porn and rubbery sex toys out of his closet before his family could come to claim his things. He hadn’t ASKED me to, but I figured he wouldn’t want his mother sifting through butt-plugs.

And as I was clearing out all of the refuse of a silicone sex life, the box whispered to me again. I went under his bed and there it was: the Cigar Box. Then I realize that there are seventeen cigar boxes stuffed to the gills - except the newest one, which is only mostly empty.

“He might have written about butt-plugs, or hating his mother, or planning to commit suicide by standing up too quickly on a bus,” I worried, deeply concerned for his legacy. For how he would have felt about how his mother might feel reading his shit. Or anyone reading his shit.

I took the boxes, and I put them under my bed. I never opened them. I’ve got a whole poet under my bed. But now I’m moving to New York City - the Big Apple - and I can’t take all of these cigar boxes with me. So does anyone want a poet? I’m selling a whole poet for $400. No one’s ever read any of this shit. You can keep it, just for yourself, your own poet. Isn’t that fun? Or you can show it to your friends, tell them the story of the unpublished piece of shit who fell dead on a bus in Mesa. $300 and you can own a whole poet. You can pretend the shit is yours, get published and famous. No one will ever know, he’s decomposing and no one else ever saw a word of this shit. $200. Come on. No one? No one wants a poet? A life’s work? Ok. It’s going in the garbage.