Jeffrey Haynes
Champion
I’m the contestant on a gameshow. It’s called I’m So Hungry I’ll Do Anything. I’ve passed the Name that Dictator and How Many Cheeseburgers Can You Fit in Your Face in Sixty Seconds challenges swimmingly. I practiced purging for weeks, and read everything I could on Stalin, I explain to the host who looks a lot like Pat Sajak if he got hammered with an anvil. In fact, everyone in the studio audience looks a little like that–defeated, flat-headed, and creepily baby-faced. What happened? I wonder, and a shoe factory I used to work at in Milwaukee shutters its windows. But we go on. It’s the lightning round. I’m nailing all the trivia Pat “the Anvil” Sajak can throw at me. George Jefferson, I answer and the cannon booms. Lionel. Weezy. Florence. What is “Me So Horny”? Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. A gong sounds, and the floor retracts revealing the lava lake obstacle course. Bonus round. I start sweating like my father used to when the rent was due. How did I get here? I wonder as I hop from hot rock to hotter rock. And what do I get if I win? Back at the shoe factory, I remember I once saw a sewing machine yank a man in half and then stitch him back together again. For once I hear cheering. I hear the crowd calling my name. All I really want, I think, is for this life to mean something. I’m the contestant on a game show. It’s called You’re the Son of a Failure. It’s called You Haven’t Suffered Enough.
Jeff Haynes is a graduate of the MFA program at Virginia Tech. His work has appeared in journals such as Yalobusha Review, Word Riot, Gabby, and The Hollins Critic. He lives in Madison, WI and rides a bicycle.
For more from Jeffrey Haynes, check out the full issue of Poetry Fix here.