4 Micros from the Mid-Atlantic – Richard Pounder

May 14, 2026

POCOMOKE CITY

 

The air in Pocomoke City, Maryland burns my nostrils and eyes. It smells like chicken shit and ammonia. The shit lives in the sticky air and clings to the corners of my dry mouth. The well water is too rusty for me to drink too much at once.

“Put your fucking balls away!” shouts Linda from the porch.

Uncle John, eighty-four, sits on a tractor in a wife beater and boxers, legs spread wide, dark brain hanging out. 

Across the yard, his granddaughter, Britni, laughs. She’s twenty-eight. 

A wolf is tied by a chain to a thick tree trunk. A white-painted circle surrounds it. Britni bends over, drops a handful of chicken feed inches inside the painted circle. A hen wanders toward the circle. Britni giggles, eyes wide, lips curled over yellow teeth.

When the hen gets inside the circle, the wolf lunges, plucks its head off. 

Uncle John watches, squints, scratches his balls.

“No more, Brit!” says Linda. 

Britni heads inside the trailer. 

“No porn!” Uncle John yells.

“Fuck you!” says Britni. 

When I walk inside, I see Britni sitting in a bedroom so small only a twin bed, a plastic tote full of unfolded clothes, and a fish tank with green water sitting on the floor. She sits on the bed, holding the laptop on her lap. When she sees us come in, she slams the laptop shut.

“What are you doin’, Brit?” snarls Linda.

“Nothing!” 

“I’m gonna get you, little froggy!” says Uncle John. 

Britni slams her door shut. 

“John!” shouts Aunt Linda. “Help me!” She collapses onto the couch. “My insides fell out again.”

 
THANK YOU

 

19-year-old me walks through west Philly, crushed ice sidewalks, to buy some 40s. 

A guy stops me. Fifties. His eyes empty. He holds a wad of 100-dollar bills. 

A barefoot woman stands next to him, sobbing. “Don’t do it! Please!”

He stares at me. 

“Don’t do it!” she says. 

“Take it,” he says, waving the cash in my face. 

“What?”

“Come on, I don’t need this shit. Take it.”

“Um.”

“Let’s just go home! Please!” Her face is soaked.

He shoves the cash into my chest. “Just take it!” 

“Uh. I’m good.”

“What the fuck! Take the fucking money!” 

I take the money. 

He pulls out a gun, holds it against my forehead. 

“Thank you,” he says.

 
TRAIN STOP

 

Philly. 5:00 A.M. With my girlfriend. Just us and some college girl.

On the departing platform a guy with disheveled hair staggered, wobbled. We laughed.

He got close to the edge. Fell in. Six feet deep. 

He’ll find his way out.

We waited a few moments. Nothing.

Then, a train whistle. 

I ran down the stairs.

The whistle got louder.

Curled around the bottom railing. 

Even louder. 

Sprinted up the steps, quads burning.

I got to the top. 

He was on his knees, eyelids fluttering, reaching up with a limp arm.

I reached my hand down.

The light from the train shone on our faces.

He grabbed my hand.

I pulled him up. 

“Thanks man,” he slurred. 

I went back with my girlfriend. 

We watched the man wander off.

“He’ll probably fall off a bridge or get hit by a car somewhere else,” the college girl said. She smiled at me for a second, then looked at her phone.

 
QUESADILLA/RUM

 

Guy smoking a blunt on 17th and Montgomery in Philly punches me in the jaw while I’m running with my cross-country team. 

They keep running. 

I see a brick. Think about picking it up, chucking it at his head.

Neck and jaw swollen.

Usually, I eat dinner with the team. Tonight, I sit in my dorm, hunched over my desk, sucking mashed potatoes and gravy through a straw, grimacing, watching Howard Stern. It hurts every time I laugh. 

My roommate and his girlfriend come back. 

“Holy shit! What happened?” he asks. 

I tell them. 

His girlfriend’s mouth hangs agape.

“Damn, dude,” he says. 

“What’d you do?” she asks. 

“Went back, punched him. His head hit the side mirror of his car.” 

I watch to see if she licks her lips. 

She doesn’t.

“He never got up,” I add.

“Dan, you wouldn’t have done shit,” she laughs. 

“What?” he says. 

She laughs again. 

He shoves her on his bed.

She giggles like a child, until he spits in her face.

“Cunt.”

She cries, leaves. 

Two nights later he’s visiting his parents.

I find two plastic bottles of rum in our mini freezer. 

I watch Family Guy all day, drink both bottles, wondering if she’ll come by.

Suddenly Dan is in my room with his girlfriend. 

I walk up to her, trip, land on her, face lands on her shoulder. 

She hugs me. 

I drape myself over her. 

Dan forces a grimace-grin.

Hours later I wake up with something in my hand. A crumpled chicken quesadilla from Taco Bell balled in my fist. 

“You just cut in front of everyone in line and started slamming the counter and screaming that you needed a quesadilla and that it was “a fucking emergency.”