Author: Brad Zellar

  • From The Request Line: My Unhappy Days As A Sandwich Customizer

    For a brief time, early in my days as a desperate man, I had a job at this ubiquitous sandwich chain. It was outrageous. It was awful beyond belief. I worked for this flinching woman who sat in the back room all day “portioning,” which basically involved sorting meat. You’ve probably seen how this works:…

  • Someday, Maybe

    Umarked solitude absorbing time, bloating to become an environment…. –Lisa Robertson, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture The monks at Lodeve, in Gascony, sanctified a mouse who had eaten a consecrated wafer. —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms In his reluctance to embrace any sort of tidy resolution he kept spiraling further…

  • Night Comes In, Crawling

    I don’t know who these people are, have absolutely no idea what they’re saying. Every day, every day, every day some fresh confusion. Fog, I guess, a gray shroud I hunch my way under and through. These weird, fuzzed lights emerging, gauzy red and yellow blobs blooming above me. A sinking plane emerges, the underbelly,…

  • This Morning

    I wish man had never gone to the moon. This world has tenderized me. I am a vulnerable adult. We all are. We are up to our ears in fairy dust and horse shit and monkeyshine and moonbeams. So let me tell you what I’m looking for. Let me tell you what I want: I…

  • Dear Miss Yennish…

    “There simply aren’t enough letters in the alphabet,” Mr. Lyle Baumgartner announced to his freshmen English class one afternoon. “As presently constructed the language is wholly inadequate to express the depth of my feelings.” He stared out at the blank or incredulous faces of his students. He then leaned on his desk with his left…

  • Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

    By the time I pulled into this completely unfamiliar town my radiator was shot to shit and I was so stoned and hungry that I tried to get the woman at the Taco John’s to sell me a sour cream gun. I was headed for a seminar at a tanning academy, and that notion struck…