In a flash that’s maybe as much prose poem as it is non-fiction (does it matter?), John Griswold injects us into a scene at the end of a man’s life. Three waitresses at the restaurant where the man ate every day for eight years show up at his bedside. The man has no breath to speak. But they fill him in on the gossip and how George is “still an asshole.” Before we know it the story, the transaction, is over. We are left only with the sound of a receipt being ripped off. We take the receipt. We walk out.
Beautiful Booze Hags
Jesse Nathan
Jesse Nathan is an editor at McSweeney’s and the managing editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading. His poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, the American Poetry Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Nation. He was born in Berkeley, grew up in Kansas, and lives now in San Francisco.