Who you see in that picture is not me
He’s some guy I found up North
and hired to be Shawn Misener
He only cost me a week a year
at this beautiful Lake Superior timeshare
***
Sometimes people recognize him
saying:
hey, you’re that writer from Lansing
or Flint or something
The guy who wrote that story
where the Cookie Monster screws this dude’s wife
To which the fake Shawn replies:
yeah, that’s me all right
but you better stay away from me
‘cause I’m a pothead and I’ve never been paid for writing-
not one single damn penny
***
But here’s where it gets surreal:
apparently I’ve been hired to be me as well
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Phil Dick
but I’m beginning to worry that the me who hired the me you see
isn’t me at all
It could be that the me you see
created the me you don’t see
Or, even better:
the me you see (or the me you don’t see)
is an android designed write words
and be a face on a (web)page
for mysterious covert reasons
I (he) could be anything
A creature from a paradimension
with eyes made of sweetgrass and salted butter
toting a skyscraper backpack full of scrabble tiles
The pissed off ghost of David Foster Wallace
shot back in time
to simplify his writing a bit
and recapture the American dream
Or anything else imaginable
But I’m sure the guy you see in the picture isn’t me
(him)
