At my yard sale, I promoted
a pencil sharpener for 50 cents.
Everything in my lawn sold
out. Old records, glow in the dark bouncy
balls, cigar boxes of rubber stamps, lamps
shaped like missiles. I even sold a tin can
full of dead earwigs, told a kid they were haunted.
He paid me a quarter, said, This’ll be perfect
to put inside the pillow of my older brother.
Everything sold but the pencil
sharpener. As day turned
to night, as I counted twice my fat pockets
stuffed with cash, I asked the one
remaining person (always
a straggler), asked her, Why do you think
no one snagged the pencil sharpener?
She looked at me confused
and said, What the fuck is a pencil?
Oh, that thing? We all thought
it was a tiny meat grinder, too tiny
for any of our butcher shops.
Far too tiny.
Benjamin Niespodziany is a night librarian at the University of Chicago. He runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas] and has had work published in Ghost City Press, HOOT Review, formercactus, Occulum, and others.