Jeffrey MacLachlan

Labyrinth​


Your call is important to us, but a customer service representative will be with you shortly because
we all have cooking to do.

When is the last time you prepared raw swan? Blew feathers from necks like dandelion seeds?
Please continue to hold. We’ve changed the music since the last time you called. Studies show that
you will grow hungry soon. This call may be monitored for quality assurance of the trembles in
your head. How left unchecked they become cockroaches that feed on your kitchen backsplash
and crawl through keyholes. There you are again, candlestick phone, waiting for an answer. The
lamp just flickered in preparation for the tea kettle. What if you died right now, this instant?
Waiting to be someone’s fiftieth call today?

I’m sorry, you have dialed incorrectly. Please choose from the following options: 1) Meet
someone new. Offer slices of rose petal toast. 2) Forego glasses, and wash scotch down your throat. 3) Para
español frenéticamente explicar sus sueños. 4) A representative’s fingers will shove yellowed recipes
through the keyhole at dawn. You will take a brief survey after the call—ears filled with sparkling
bells, alerting you of dinner smoke behind another closing door.

Copywriter

                                          
Vivek drained another old fashioned and pointed toward the heavens when he spoke.

Temp. Temporary. Temporality. Repeating words for little pay. Do you even know how you make
an old fashioned? Muddle sugar with bitters and add jenever. Vivek was here. Vivek will return.
You know how a neighborhood bar changes when you wake up for happy hour? I just counted
all the freaking lights here. This is what the world feels like now. Always six o’clock. Every light a
tobacco flower.
​
I smoke weed. Write copy. Wrote copy. Potent, potent weed. Anyone can get published, you know.
Anyone can be a television star. I yelled that on my way out the door. Fuck Jaipur. Not going back
there. New York has all the darkness and all the light in all the universe. Who wants more suds?
Just say, Vivek was here and Vivek will return. Alcohol reaches true contentment when consumed
by former strangers. I still feel young sprouts beneath my eyes. New light will blossom and rewrite
the next world…





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Jeffrey MacLachlan