Eli S. Evans

Dialogue with Police Officer


— I’m going to have to stop you here. We’ve got the road closed up ahead on account of a shooting.


— A shooting? That’s terrible.


— What do you mean terrible? You’ve got, first of all, exposure for the area on a national level, plus the revenue from the fees they’re paying which, hell, maybe we’ll be able to afford to get the General Pierce repaired before it collapses in the middle of rush hour, and on top of all that, based on what I’ve seen so far, the movie looks like it’s going to be a real gasser.


— Oh, they’re shooting a movie.


— Sure are. Some kind of driving scene right now, I’m not sure exactly what the details of it are. And yesterday, of course, we had the bank robbery in town.


— That must have been fun.


— Fun? It might seem fun from where you’re sitting, pal, but from a law enforcement perspective, there’s nothing fun about a bank robbery, and I’m pretty sure the tellers didn’t enjoy it much, either, especially the one who ended up with a bullet lodged in her proximal humerus. Maybe you can pay her a visit at the hospital where they’re trying to figure out whether she’s ever going to be able to use her right arm again and ask her yourself. By the way, we’ve still got one of the perpetrators at large, and he is considered armed and dangerous, so I’m going to advise extra vigilance on your part as long as that continues to be the case.


Eli S. Evans has recent or forthcoming work in, among others: N+1, X-R-A-Y Lit, Heavy Feather Review, Expat Lit, Rejection Letters, E*ratio Postmodern Poetry, 433, Squawk Back, Berfrois, Eclectica, Drunk Monkeys, and Right Hand Pointing (One Sentence Poems division). A chapbook with Analog Submission Press (A Partial List of Things I Thought Might Kill Me Before I Started Taking a Daily Dose of Benzodiazepines) was published in August 2020, and a small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, is available now from Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera at https://www.moonrabbitbooks.com/product/obscure-irregular