Ren Pike : Creative Non-Fiction : March 2021

Essays

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up south of the airport. It wasn’t something I led with back then. Taking the bus into town was like traveling to another, more deliberate country. Truth is, pretty much everyone here talks true north, but chooses to live hugging the US/Canada border. A national cognitive dissonance so rarely confronted. I’m taking a bite out of my snow cone exterior, revealing some of my gooey, deep south center.

Large Garden Gnome $35

This is a pandemic. And no one should be judging how one spends one’s time. Maybe you have high brow pursuits. Well and good. Me, I’m browsing garden statuary on kijiji. Most of it’s benign. Frogs balancing on buckets. Puppies rascally chewing cement shoes. Gnomes in primary colors,  looking dickish. But LARGE GARDEN PIXIE is an abomination.

With that shit-eating grin. And his hand sort of disappearing near the fastening of his short pants. I’m not sure if he has a black eye. But he probably deserved it.

All I wanted was, perhaps, a sturdy bird bath. Something the crows couldn’t kick over in their petulance. Never dreaming there’d be this kind of fuckery. In plain sight. In this town.

Clearly he’s lost his footing. Landed arse-first in a bog. Stoned out of his gourd-shaped ears. 

One eye closed in sleazy half wink. I feel dirty just scrolling past. Yet I click. Twice. Second view more gag-inducing than the first. I can now see his tongue lolling. Or perhaps, he’s licking his thumb? No doubt coated in Amanita muscaria, conveniently piled nearby.

It’s some kind of gritty garden-bottom Gothic. Done by hobbits. On acid. After being denied second breakfast.

The ad says it’s engraved with a welcome message.

Overkill, I say.