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Little Bads
By Jacob Hetrick Every good piggy knew the story by rote— how the wicked wolf had grabbed the first piggy by the throat and with a snap and a rip, and oh, a gush of blood! extinguished the little pig’s soul before it licked its lips and ate him whole. The second pig was not such easy fare for in his state, it was legal for pigs to keep arms to bear— to polish and preen and keep them seen and at every piggy’s hips, there was a cold metal sheen. So, when the big bad wolf came a-knocking, the second little piggy got his gun a-cocking, and with a…
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To Myself, Age Eight
By Jacob Hetrick A kid’s brain is a demented thing filled with slime and gunk and G.I. Joe, grasshopper legs and dog slobber and sawdust, Pokémon and Inuyasha and PlayStation, a fragmented mirror that reflects in miniature a thousand facets of family, of given love and learned hate, and in between the cracks in the glass you can see the backboard of the person to be. My home was a hollow conch that echoed with screams instead of waves and when I crawled off the bus, I found that that the screams followed, echoing inside my head until they shot like vomit from my mouth, ripping apart everything in their…
