Cats abandoned Peacock Lane generations ago / There have been many attempts to re-introduce cats to the neighborhood & they always agree to leave / The HOA meets every Fifth Friday at a subcommittee chairperson’s house & is expected to be fed & watered with seasonal fruit & watercress sandwiches & those tiny bottles of liquor that can easily be hidden in toilet paper rolls / Subcommittee chairpeople call for emergency sessions with or without an emergency / The chairman of the cat reintroduction subcommittee went missing after an attempt to adopt a pair of black cats rescued from drowning in the Willamette / His house was sold to The Dandies a year after he disappeared which the current affairs subcommittee unanimously decided was an appropriate length of time to mourn / The chairwoman of the decoration subcommittee made her objections known but who could agree with her? / Probably the missing chairman / Six years ago the HOA amended the charter to avoid stalemates with filibusters / The compromise agreed to allow the use of filibusters to delay votes on pervasive issues as long as the HOA member speaking continued to drink a beverage of the hosting chairperson’s choice / This change to the charter caused half a dozen relapses but famously tabled a contentious mandatory poodle dying bill that would have otherwise easily passed if it wasn’t for the decoration subcommittee chairwoman’s love of sloe gin & soda / HOA meetings can get understandably out of hand following Fifth Fridays so the following weeks are usually kept sacred / The welcome subcommittee tries to hand out baskets of shortbread chessmen to new arrivals & those whose important causes fell / The Dandies feed Grief their cookies & fill out morning crosswords after a heated HOA meeting.
Run for the decoration subcommittee chair
Help the chairwoman’s election
RJ Equality Ingram works as a used bookseller for Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette. Their first collection of poetry The Autobiography of Nancy Drew is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing in early 2024. RJ received their MFA in creative writing from Saint Mary’s College of California with concentrations in poetry & creative nonfiction. More work can be found in Phoebe Journal, Miniskirt Magazine & Citron Review among others. RJ’s cat Brenda lost a leg designing her memory palace.