Portside

Left Hangin’, or Whatever Happened to Jeffrey E?

By Lee Rossi

No, it wasn’t the Clintons. It wasn’t even Donald Trump. It was Jeff done it. You’ve seen that awful Nick Cage movie Face/Off. It was one of Jeff’s favorites. When he wasn’t spanking his underage beauties, you could find him in front of the bigscreen watching Nick trade faces with the bad guy. Jeff didn’t believe in destiny. Anything is possible for a boy with a billion bucks—cold fusion, trips to Mars, cryogenics—and this was just a matter of a little cosmetic surgery. The human face, the human body is plastic beyond belief. The girls proved that every day. (Let’s not talk about the ductility of human morality, especially the morality of his rich and powerful pals—now there’s infinite malleability for you.) All he had to do was find someone who’d take the rope for him. The coverup was no problem, all those instant millionaires in the Federal Corrections system. There were more candidates than you could count for his little experiment. You’ve heard that some of the girls are going after the estate—well, guess what, all those secret accounts in Switzerland and Grand Cayman have been hemorrhaging like a blood bank. Where, oh where did those little coins go? Only Jeff, and his accountant, know. Well, maybe Ghislaine knows. You can find her at the In ’N Out burger in Sherman Oaks, and at a table at Les Deux Magots in Paris, and sipping tea in Soho (both of them), and paragliding just off Cabo—wherever Jeff goes. She’s been cloned a few times, no problem for a boy with a billion bucks. Wait’ll you see his next trick.

Lee Rossi is a winner of the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Steve Kowit Prize. His latest book is Darwin’s Garden, from Moon Tide Press.  Recent poems appear in The Southwest Review, Rattle, Spillway and The Southern Review.  He is a member of the Northern California Book Reviewers and a Contributing Editor to Poetry Flash.