Dear Kent,
This is awkward for me because we have not talked very often, like only when we see each other on the street and randomly in other places (in fact it is why I’m writing is related to this), but I’m a believer in community and of in fostering communal values. I hope it is as guidance from a member of this community that this letter will be read.
I wanted to make you aware of the possibility that your dog is very dumb. I know that dogs are not smart by their nature, but your dog—Axel? Aaron? Sorry, I can’t remember—looks exceptional when compared to them. Whatever the opposite of genius is, that is what you’re your dog is.
Everyone is free to make their own life choices, this is America. But this is also Hillside Ave, Kent. We have standards. I can’t imagine your you’re setting a positive example for your son—Alex? Andrew?—having a dog that, I’ve been told, has been known to bark threateningly at the same tree stump at the end of the street and that sits on its forelegs. You know, with it’s ass and tail pointing UP.
As a man I barely know you—as a community member, however, you and I are of the same soul, and we must both clean it.
Sincerely,
Jim Avery
Dear Samantha,
Picking up from our last meeting, I’ve come up with more things that will not save you. They are, in no particular order: hard seltzer, the peak hour express train, travelling more, the health and prosperity of your children, the bond between you and your aging parents, infrastructure reform, George Saunders, Flint water poisoning conspiracy theories, your love for me, all the Diet Dr. Pepper on earth, your husband.
Please burn this letter as you do the others.
In love and discretion,
Shawn
Dear Mr. Elmhurst,
Enclosed is a check for two dollars and 50 cents ($250), the estimated value of your peacock-shaped rattan chair.
We have not discussed or made a prior arrangement for my buying your rattan chair: but come on. I see it sitting out there on your patio all year long. No one sits in it, even when you have people over. I’ve noticed. I bet if a squirrel so much as graced one of its arms it would fall to pieces.
I think you need to come to terms with the fact that you are not a responsible caretaker for this specific piece of property. I only hope that the rest of your furniture is treated with better respect.
Once you’ve delivered the rattan chair to my home (and don’t worry about wrapping it or anything), I promise to treat it with the utmost reverence. I will keep it in my den and put Christmas lights around it. I will keep them there all year-round, like the stars in the firmament. I will place devotional candles around it at a safe distance. I will let its surroundings and my own flesh burn before I let flame even touch it.
I will not sacrifice living things to appease it. But I will present ground chuck molded in a doglike shape before it.
Your Neighbor,
Kent Wellstone
Dear Shawn,
If you want to keep meeting, I need you to stop bringing that 10 gallon hat with you. You say you wear it to disguise yourself, but I’m pretty sure it just makes you more conspicuous. You also don’t take it off when we’re alone. Yeah, in the beginning I was intrigued, and for a time titilatted. Now it is only confusion. I tried to mine that confusion for any kind of useful effect but it didn’t work. Confusion is my most intimate partner. I know confusion more than I know myself, certainly more than I care to know you.
I feel like if confusion was corporeal enough to wear a 10 gallon hat, it’d be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. That’s just where my head’s at now. Being honest.
Samantha
Dear God,
Please for the last but probably not final time: kill all the longboard Nazis.
And, time permitting, the curb goblins and the whippit maidens.
In Your Holy Name,
Steve L. Bertram
Dear Clark,
Please stop pissing on my driveway at night. Or at any time for that matter. You seem to act under the impression that I can’t see you, and sure, I can’t completely see you, but I see someone who looks a lot like you on my fucking porch camera. You moron. You have one too. Did you think you were the only one?
Though the more I consider it, it is just as possible that you just don’t care. Your unwelcome streams of excremental fluid is a representation of the nihilism with which you stain our morally upright potholes and cracked curbs. I’ve been writing and writing to the Public Works Dpt. to bring those utilitarian discrepancies nearer the exalted level of the neighborhood virtues. But I doubt you’d care to comprehend such a matter of import.
Whatever the case may be, it baffles me why you do this, why you chose my driveway as opposed to anyone else’s, and why you do it every other night in the same spot where I can make out your form from my phone screen. I suspect you’re lonely. I look at your shadow relieving itself on my property and I try to picture that loneliness. It’s not so far off for me, really. If I didn’t have what I have, if I didn’t have Emma or the kids or Sgt. Major Cuddles, I would be pissing on any driveway I could find for validation. But I’m not I do, so I don’t.
But I’m warning you, not seeking answers. I hope you will stop after you read this. If you don’t, I have a cousin who’s sister-in-law is a urine analist for the Harrisburg Parks Department, and I will swab your piss off my pavement for confirmation if it comes to that. But I hope it doesn’t.
Sincerely,
Jethro Tully (shut up SHUT UP)
Dear Mom and Dad,
I took your advice and started listening to contemporary pop music in order to relate to Steph and Harry more. The problem is I think that it only put me and them further apart. Steph likes Billie English while Harry likes St. Lucia and some Bon Iver. But then there’s my own inner-child who likes Lana, Marilyn Manson, and some BTS every now and then.
Was this what it was like for you? Were you listening to Til Tuesday but wishing instead to hear Echo and the Bunnymen or Rush? I hope my children never meet or befriend someone like my inner-child, neither of them has the will to resist her.
Please, Mom and Dad, forgive me.
Love,
Erica
dear sir(s) or madam(s):
i know that you think this is funny—i know that seeing us suffer makes you happy—but know this too: the kiwanis club events coordination committee never forgets and wont rest until we know youll never feel safe in this town again
listen—or don’t—your choice