Dez
public comment, three minutes
Dez signs up for public comment at every meeting and gets three minutes at the mic while the dais, which has already voted, looks at its phones. The piece is a catalog of real nouns and a line that comes back meaner every time. “Time.” is the cut; the line after it is the one they cannot gavel. Dez is not real. Every hard noun in the litany is.
A man pushed through an Ohio crowd and lunged at a candidate for governor. / They're calling it an isolated incident. / Isolated is one man; the crowd is my block, and now yard signs come with a security detail. / By November you get wanded to say your name at a school gym, alone in line, and they'll call that isolated too.
Patriot stockpiles sit at thirty-six percent; arms exports reached nearly a hundred countries. / They call it rebuilding the inventory. / Rebuilding on my block is a furnace part back-ordered till spring — except the line's maxed out and the customers are countries. / A hundred of them on the waiting list; your block is number one-oh-one, delivery 2031, weather permitting.
They finished a helipad on the South Lawn; the East Wing came down for a ballroom. / He calls it magnificent. / Magnificent is a crane over the grass while the clinic on my block runs a bake sale for a generator. / The chopper lands on your roof next, and the landing fee rides on your rent — magnificent.
Thirty witnesses told the Inspector General the Labor Secretary's department was toxic, intimidating and humiliating. / She calls it a work environment. / On my block, reporting a work environment gets you walked out same-day. / She resigned. The report went in a drawer — and the drawer is the work environment your desk is sitting in.
Ten million people lost coverage in one term. / They're calling it a lapse. / A lapse is forgetting a birthday; this one's got a route, and the truck runs weekly. / Half the bill hasn't landed yet — the other half's addressed to your chair.