My Cardboard Balcony

Manchester Cigarette Lighter by Belinda Roddie Flicker on a ticker, tickle her belly button with smoke. You check your time bomb before it explodes, hold your breath until it reeks of battered cheese. Stinks a million times worse than the kiss you gave at the New Year's party at a quarter past eight, when you lit a Manchester knock-off firecracker and flung it right under a poor New York mascot's rubber nose and sent it off screaming out firefly flickers.

"I've decided to run for mayor of Harvorclarke." There was some light applause echoing by the TV set, but Franklin was less than amused. "You've got to be kidding me," he grumbled. "I mean, I like Uncle Bob and all, but...mayor? He may be many things, but political material is not one of them." "Hey, with the right amount of gaffes and silliness, he could be the best circus act I've seen in two years," his father grinned, getting a bonk on the head from his wife and, subsequently, Uncle Bob's sister.