Bad SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

Sean Cho Ayres

I didn’t see anyone I didn’t know 
for weeks. I thought really hard 
about things I had forgotten like
trapping sand in a cheese grater
or something more trite about 
wind. On Monday I read a click-
bait article that definitively proved 
that we are indeed a combination of 
the five people that we spend the 
most time with. Then I brought my 
mirror to a pawn shop 

and said “this thing can see ghosts!” 
and now I have a thorough understanding 
of the fluctuation of liquid silver prices 
and the exponential regression in value 
of electronics. I want to open my own store 

whose walls and shelves are set up in a 
spiral. The outer shelves will be lined 
with things everyone likes. But as you 
go deeper in the items will keep get 
more and more niche and in strange 
combinations. Till you find me sitting 
on a grey reclining chair at a 75% angle, 
snacking on banana Laffy Taffy, while playing a game 
on my phone, watching early 2000’s Big Ten football, 
and listening to that one podcast where Siken talks about how the right margin is the divine. 
If anyone ever comes back there 
I’ll have a best friend 

and we will be surrounded 
by all the things we like. 
We will be too busy 
to talk to each other.

Sean Cho Ayres is the author of “American Home" (Autumn House 2021) which was the winner of the Autumn House Publishing chapbook contest. His work can be future found or ignored in Pleiades, The Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine and the Associate Editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal.