Bottom of the drink: they had
to go. The Coke machine, the snack
machine, the deep fryer. Hoisted
and dragged through the halls
and out to the curb, they sat with
other trash beneath gray, forlorn
skies behind the elementary
school, wondering what their next
move would be. The Coke machine
had always wanted to live
the life of a hobo, jumping trains,
eating from garbage, making fire
in old oil drums. It had some
strange romantic notions of being homeless,
is what the deep fryer thought.
Its opinion was to head to court,
sue the bastards at the school for early
termination of contract. It was
the embodiment of justifiable anger.
It believed privately that it was an incarnation
of Nemesis, the goddess of divine
retribution. What the snack machine
thought, it kept to itself, but it did say
that nothing ever ends. The others
were confused, then angry, but finally
understood, or thought they did. The snack
machine’s candy melted in the sun.