They said it was the worst fucking idea they’d ever heard. I looked at the straw and sticks (horses. the Amish. Transcendentalism.) and bricks (inner city. Samuel Slater. Modernism.) and decided that mine had to be the most fabulous house ever made. I cemented it with glitter glue and imagined that when the wolf showed up his retinas would be so scorched by colored eyes that he’d sink to his knees. But it didn’t happen like that. It gets maddening, watching the sun amplify first the greens, then the golds, then the purples, day after day. The wolf finally appeared yesterday, and he just shrugged and said, “I see what you’re going for, but the Dadaism thing doesn’t work for me.” I’m wondering if it’s time to bring in the wrecking ball. Apply for a factory job. Hop on a horse.

Jessie Eikmann is an MFA student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She will graduate in December 2019. People will be confused by her inappropriate pansexual poetry. She might hit up Tinder some more.

Photo by Marek Szturc

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