The Gorko Gazette

Daily Humor

thegorkogazette

10.23.2026 6:46 AM

2 by Alex Carrigan

I’ve Never Seen the Words ‘Fucking Crickets’ in a Poem Before, Have You?
-Maureen Seaton

You’ve seen the births and deaths of children, ideas, and worlds in poems.
You’ve seen the passage of and the end of time, the rewinding and the new.
Perhaps you’ve smiled when you’ve seen your favorite flower
mentioned in a poem, or maybe you’ve instead remembered seeing
that flower the moment you lost someone close to you. Perhaps
you took what remained of that flower and tried to write it into
a new poem, but instead I set the flower on fire because I’m not
trying to write a sappy poem. I’m writing something with authenticity.
This poem was never about flowers, time, death, or ideas, right?
It’s about wondering whether I have anything meaningful to say before
the sonnet ends. If I too have regarded my favorite flower or the memory of the
first time I started a kitchen fire or the time I wrote a gritty poem
in hopes it made people think I was cool. You’re probably ready to listen,
but what will you hear when you finally get to the end? Fucking crickets.

111^th Street to Eastern Parkway-Brooklyn Museum

A man eats out of a glass Tupperware while waiting for the J Train. I’m not close enough to see what it is, but the color of his food reminds me of dried autumn leaves. On the train, an older Asian man loudly watches videos on his phone. I can’t understand what he’s listening to, but the voices start juvenile and mature as we get closer to Broadway Junction. A pigeon feather sneaks aboard the next train, and even though I leave space for it next to me, it remains on the ground. An MTA worker doesn’t know how to get from the Livonia Street station to the Junius Street Station, but a man whose t-shirt is covered in horror movie slashers knows the way. He ends up being the nicest person I meet all day. One subway car advertises nothing but AI. Another car advertises nothing but the new Harry Potter audiobooks. One car has an ad that’s nothing but the word ‘TINDER’ on a picture of two smiling women. As I get to my stop, I see some tagger’s message to the passing train is ‘Zoot Zoot,’ and I still don’t know what that man at the first station was eating.

About the artist

Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Confessions and Cold Coffee (forthcoming 2027, Troublemaker Firestarter), Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne (Alien Buddha Press, 2022).