My Value
(Published in Jubilee City, 2005)

I had to work at the zoo. I was fifteen and got arrested for driving under age. I shoveled shit from the four corners of the world. Once a monkey violently pulled my hair up to the bars and held me there till I fit the squeegee I was carrying between them and pounded him till he let go. Another time I was in a working in the back room at the nocturnal part when a ring-tail cat bit the shit out of my leg and I kicked it across the room. The pretty but angry German female zoologist said in a heavy accent “FOOL, ZAT ANIMAL IS VORTH MORE ZHEN YOU!”