Tokens by Jeff Burt

I admit I have tried carousel tokens in the laundromat, and once in a parking meter, but the slide
mechanism failed on the washer and the parking meter ate the token and gave no time.

I moved into a tri-plex during a cold Alaskan front that had raindrops as big as those tokens,
brilliant silvery globs falling as if hurled. It was when we use to fear things polar before the ice
cap melted and glaciers heaved and were gone.

My neighbors were polar, too, icy, hibernating, hyper-native, weed and shroom, glum and
gloom. I gave a few tokens to their daughter so she could ride the carousel but they gave them
back when they moved, saying the “happiness” tokens were fake America.

I get it, but if the washer and the meter wouldn’t take the tokens, and the little girl could not ride
on the carousel, to what good?

I tell you, I went to the Boardwalk that morning and I rode those damn plastic horses hard knees
pressed to their mass-produced flanks until they frothed, happy to run and sweat, and when at
last I had run out of time I threw my gathered ring at the hole in the wall for a prize, and I won, I
won.

Elated, I spent the rest of the day washing clothes at a laundromat and stuffing real quarters into
a meter, for I had ridden a fake horse to victory, and I was smack dab in the middle of fake
America and had, for a moment, a happiness no one could shake.

Jeff Burt lives in California. He has become adept at escaping floods, droughts, earthquakes and forest fires. He has contributed to Lowestoft Chronicles, Per Contra, Green Hills Lantern Literary, and Does It Have Pockets. He can be reached at Jeff-burt@sbcglobal.net