The Gorko Gazette

Daily Humor

thegorkogazette

5.9.2026 6:35 AM

What is your urgency statement? by Bruce Reisner

What is your urgency statement?

I had to compose, like a retarded Ludwig Von Beethoven, urgency statements. This was for a professional fundraising biz. I was a phone POS. Anyone who talks to people on the phone on a near straight commission basis is probably a piece of shit. Maybe I’m being unfair.

Every week this asshole manager, five foot one, pudgy, fingers the length of animated unfiltered cigarettes, smelled like a smug cosmetic, would make each of the phone creeps think up, off the cuff, one sentence that explains why low earning jackoffs at large should give a lot of money to God’s personal selection of declining Western establishments.

I need to say why life is barely worth shit. One of the top earning jackoffs answered, ‘Someone has to help pay for costumes.’ The man’s urgency was pure garbage. All our urgencies were a fabrication. Sad.

There was shit I might have enjoyed believing. Ballet. I think of the sublime. Urgency is needing to shit. No one in this miserable occupied territory stood on one aching toe while kicking since Grease 2 was playing at movie theaters. The elements composing need could all go possum. The need for costumes dies with dudes formerly dancing.

Maybe I’m fucked up. Maybe men in scant little costumes are urgent. Maybe men are dancing, somewhere or other, urgently. The telephones themselves are dying to do Swan Lake.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Bruce Reisner is an artist/writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems, short fiction and visual art have been seen in Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Sledgehammer Magazine, Readthisplease (an anthology) and the Ranfurly Review.