Gremlins by Adam Kelly Morton
okay blah blah here we go
jotting things down on the page
words like weight
gained and lost and gained again
and maybe I should go for a run
no no I already exercised today
plus I have to get dinner ready for the wife and kids
some environment-destroying steak
made while washing down lashings of rainforest-burning coffee
and plastic-in-the-teabag tea
lukewarm from earlier
when I submitted a poem no one wants
all about Covid
an abusive father
and an embattled wife
the writing’s shit
no no don’t listen to that that’s just the voices
she calls them The Gremlins
and they tell you to eat more
and that your self-care is vanity
and that you’re mean to the kids
and that all your scripts are garbage
and that you don’t deserve any success
and that no one’s interested in your work
and that nothing you create has any kind of heart
and that you’re missing out on life’s precious moments
and that all you can do is sit around and scribble and edit bullshit
and that if there weren’t a pandemic going on you’d have even less meaning in your life
at least now you’ve got the family to drive around and to shop cook clean for
and you can still sit at home writing endless pages of shit lost and shit gained
that no one will ever read
like this poem
there’s the doorbell
another package of pull-ups
shit lost shit gained
my wife ordered them
she texted from the hospital to say work sucks she misses me
I told her I miss her too
she filled out the Census last night because she’s the one with the full-time job
while I do 60+ hours a week for us and the kids
but unpaid doesn’t count so I must be lazy
not an upstanding taxpaying Canadian fucking citizen
just a forty-eight-year-old part-time student pursuing yet another MFA
Masters in Fuck All
Adam Kelly Morton is a Montreal-based husband and father (four kids, all seven-and-under). He's had stories published in Canada, the US, and the UK, and has an upcoming piece in A Wild and Precious Life: A Recovery Anthology. Adam is working toward an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University, UK (distance).