Member-only story
Stinky Pete and the Dalai Lama
A Poem About Small-Town Life
It is home to four thousand
Including Stinky Pete — who doesn’t really stink, but no one can remember how the moniker came to be
It’s where Rashena
(no last name)
just last Thursday
saw the face of the Dalai Lama in her 7-grain cereal down at Lydia’s Cafe
It’s home to Mavis and Jane, who run the Back Pocket Bookstore — a cover for the local coven and women you would be wise not to cross
It is the strange, slow saunter of village life
Where acid gossip follows the adulterous
The freaks
And the new-age mystics
It is the place where big fish swim in small ponds
Boasting of the little wakes they leave behind
It is the place where familiar old dogs lie in the dust on the side of the road
Where house paint peels
Where, even now, doors seldom lock
