Letter by Steve Passey

Hey. Long time no chat. I was thinking how there used to be this sign above the bar in the Club Cigar in Great Falls, Montana (where the girl behind the bar had a mouth full of Skoal and bought me two beers on the house once and smiled at me.) The sign said:

“We screw the other guy and pass the savings on to you”

and I thought about you and I wanted to tell you that this is how Trump got in, because he understood you don’t have to pass the savings on once you are in, and you get in on the first half of what you say. I think Bernie’s goals are laudable and that no one can dispute single-payer health care, but Hillary won the nomination fair and then the popular vote fair but here we are and nothing seems fair. I wanted to tell you that the democrats, the almost bankrupt democrats, those small “r” republicans, aren’t going to be the ones to save us although I wish they would, and that Hillary will never go back to Flint. I know that you still hate me, hate that I am still out here breathing, somewhere, and that it isn’t about politics or you wouldn’t have called up to tell me how you were getting married. “Imagine that,” you said. “Imagine someone marrying me,” as if I would somehow say anything other than congratulations and that you deserve to be loved the way you want to be loved.

Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the collections Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock (Tortoise Books, 2017) and The Coachella Madrigals (Luminous Press, 2017) and many other things. Tweet to him @CanadianCoyote1