Margaret Graber
Loan Payments
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When I create the account to pay off my college loans,
one step of the process directs me to choose an image that mirrors my identity, so whenever I log in the Internet will show me myself: spiral-shaped shell like our infinite nature. Wooden ship. Guy in a top hat because every now and then we should get a little classy. Four pages of this. Racecars and power drills side by side. Dog jumping a fence. Piano with the lid propped open like a skull flap during brain surgery. Showgirl. Soldier. Seahorse. Sunset. DaVinci’s Vitruvian man in between the plastic pink face of a Ken Doll and a stapler. I know a white guy made this list too because the woman in the third row wearing red lipstick is simply labeled "Woman," whereas the "Scholar" is a white man in glasses. Moments, too, I think an existential crisis could occur—the cartoon hand pointing to a clock in the next box; white glaze of an eyeball; bridge connecting Liberty with Butterflies. How could I choose just one? Am I not the exoskeleton of a Beetle, the sour face of a Frog? I want to be half-Rooster, half-Waterfall. One-third Rubber Duck, two-thirds box of Crayons. I know my mother would pick the box with Cake, but me—I don’t know. Mornings I’ve preferred the red flash of a Cardinal on grey sky, others the shining silver arms of Wrenches. Yesterday I bought a Knitted Hat. I could pick the Waltz or a Boxing Match but before I choose the skull and crossbones of a Pirate Flag, because I reason Death is like the one true thing, the buttons linking to the previous and next pages freeze, so I’m left with Michelangelo, Mona Lisa, the seahorse, or Barbie’s BFFL (Boyfriend for Life). I almost choose him as an ironic nod to consumer culture but instead click the black and white drawing of a girl waving a feathered fan on her chest like a pharaoh or flapper. I can label it whatever I want, so I write out the word "Loanzzzz" with four z’s like I’ve fallen asleep at the end of the alphabet and hit "Complete" where I’m taken to a screen that says my next payment will be due in twenty-nine days. |
MARGARET GRABER is a writer and poet originally from Northwest Indiana. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Jet Fuel Review, Duende, and the Button Poetry blog, among others. She currently lives and works on the Cahaba River in Alabama.
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