[Image by Alison James]
Ted Cruz Is Sad About His Beard
this morning. He’s more aware of the Internet than anyone thinks he is and this is not the meme he wanted to be. Yes, Ted does enjoy the Wolverine comparisons. Less so everything else. Ted closes the medicine cabinet only to see his own sulky face in the mirror. This is not the face of a man with super powers. He tries a smile. Shudders. Someone on Twitter has suggested he join Dollar Shave Club and Ted wonders why anyone would spend so little on something as vital as personal grooming. It sounds like a good way to get a rash, if you ask Ted. If you ask Ted, Twitter has him all wrong. He has jokes! Didn’t they see the Zodiac cypher he posted on Halloween? There are certain things that a man has to embrace in order to be the hero. Still, this is giving him a headache. He reopens the medicine cabinet again and reaches for the Tylenol. Ted wonders if he remembered to put the coffee on. He hollers to ask his wife but she doesn’t respond. Sort of like the other day when he asked if she liked his beard. Ted swallows the Tylenol and shuffles toward the kitchen where he, indeed, had not pressed the start button on his Mr. Coffee. While the water boils, Ted considers the memes he could be. Or maybe he should be a gif. Maybe he should have an Intern Photoshop something and sneak it onto one of those reddits. He strokes his beard and leans against the counter. No, Ted thinks. That didn’t work out last time. That didn’t work out at all.
E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College alumna with a B.A. in classical studies, Kristin’s work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Texas Review, The Pinch, Salamander, Barrelhouse Online, and FreezeRay Poetry and she has work forthcoming in TriQuarterly and Washington Square Review. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press) and is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got(Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.
