My Cardboard Balcony

Haul Ass by Belinda Roddie We hauled ass back in Kentucky, with a hot swallow of shitty Tennessee whiskey strapped to our hips in flagons, dripping sap on our jeans. Jeremy put the truck in neutral all the way down to the sweaty buttocks of the country, where we chilled on the beach, snorting sand with white gravel and breathing fumes so fucking toxic, it was like we were a living, flesh-bulging meth lab. On the way back east, we stopped by a graffiti lot, which was known for just that: Being a parking lot with a fuckload of graffiti. And we sprayed the shit out of an abandoned Jeep with everything from donkey dongs to uber symbolic messages of pseudo-youth rebellion and cerebral non- sequiturs seeping from the nasal cavity, where the Egyptians would extract our dreams with spoons. We penetrated New York with our arrogant libidos and stabbed Delaware right in its suburban groin, while Dover's railroad depots cried out to be ravished and painted with jus

We delved into Shakespeare for most of the semester, focusing on the tragedies more than the comedies. Well, save for the romances, which were wedged into an awkward sort of category in which not even the most prestigious scholars could exactly figure out where they belonged. At the end of the year, we got to do some cool stuff - write extension acts to plays, perform monologues. I recited the "I have of late" speech from Hamlet, having it stuck in my head for so many years since high school. And I did it to impress her.