1 poem by Dan McKeon

The Square

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Along the south side of the Square, the town activist is organizing a picket line of the depressed. They’re protesting the rampant romanticizing of their disorders. Signs read “Stop Making Movies About Me” and “Down With Tumblr,” and the police, funded by Hollywood and Big Pharma, are mobilizing across town to beat down the gloomy mob. It smells like Zoloft and marijuana and body odor. The protestors have another half hour left in them before they must return to their rooms to sleep. Its 3 pm.

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On the north side, an ice cream man going through an identity crisis is selling hotdogs to disappointed vegetarians. He wants to be taken more seriously but forgets that one of the key aspects of selling ice cream is to not sell hotdogs.

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Meanwhile, the police have showed up at the protest, armed with megaphones and recordings of disapproval from the mob’s friends and family. The sounds of “cheer up” and “you shouldn’t mope around so much” come raining down. The town activist desperately tries to reassure the mob to be sad but most of them are already in the process of burying it into themselves.

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The east side of the Square faces a former Roman Catholic Church, the current founding site of the Church of Inexplicably Loud Mumblers. They broke off from the Church after being shh’d too often during mass and also disagreeing with the idea of transubstantiation, but mostly the first part. The priest outside is holding up pictures of annoyed people, index fingers held up to pursed lips, with a red X spray painted over them.

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The mob on the south side is sulking away. Some are considering joining the Church of Inexplicably Loud Mumblers in the hopes that someone will overhear the awful things they mumble about themselves. Some are going over to get ice cream to cheer themselves up but disillusionment often breeds disillusionment.