My Cardboard Balcony

Steel Rosenburg by Belinda Roddie A crisp blue mustache, quivering, icy, raw, the hairs of cigar smoke tinging the corners like a seared ham. Pork laden cheeks, sausage lips. Ruddy red meat with aquamarine fur. The cooking of the flesh, but the cooling of age. Swivel chair. Metal music playing on a portable radio. He calls for a board meeting. Snuffs out the Alec Bradley, Steel Rosenberg keeps steel roses in steel vases in his office, where nothing can grow but the girth of his own belly, and dollar bill signs littering gold weights across his chest, pinning him down to the floor.

We have to cut our losses. Handle our back-ups. Dismantle our initiatives. Rethink our strategies. Or any other business, economic, medical, or scientific lingo like that. Point is, we need to do something different, and fast. We have a blueprint on the table. Gears literally shifting beside us and mentally in our heads. We have something phenomenal here. Something truly revolutionary. We will invent the time machine.