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Skinflints

Writer: AdminAdmin

Everyone’s a bloody

cheapskate

in Chesapeake Bay.

The tips are never

more than 1%. And that’s

if the service is good.

Value has no money

here. Dyslexia’s

overgrown

with rundown weeds.

 

In this burgeoning

mother of waters,

everyone’s donning

rags. They’re too stingy

to splurge on patches,

all thumbs with

needle & threads.

 

How this place

rejoiced

in the early

‘20s, the teens in holey

jeans. And now that

they’re out-of-fashion,

Bubba throws his

oysters off the boat,

loads its leaky deck

 

with a hundred-thousand

pairs of knee-less Lees,

haggled

from the bins

of Sally Ann.

 

And as for the love of

old tobacco—the ghost of

every Slave attests to that.

They say you hear the

coughs from Appalachia,

the stench from bad

cigars. They roll them all in sheets

of carbon paper. Used until

the Covid came to call. Then served

as masks with twist ties

for their ears. The face of one

and all stained midnight

blue. They’d wash it off

with soap but they are

frugal,


insisting that there’s nothing

like the brisk and salt of

sea to rub them clean.

Smelling like the

fish that they will eat

with every meal. Even with

dessert. See them in

Chantilly where every berry

should have been.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 12, 2025


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