Tumpangisme
by Dale Stromberg

“Give me liberty, or give us death!” So says Jephthah.
“Wait—really?” says his daughter.
(Or so she might have said—but nobody wrote it down.)

Tried swallowing poison. Tried swallowing mousetraps. Tried quicklime, helium, eye of newt, flea collars, fragments of vinyl, a mysterious fish doll, a cabinet key, and sand. Began to despair of ever being cured.

So then, nearly at the end of my rope, I swallowed an eraser. It was a white, gummy one, and it tasted like an eraser. Soft as a berry but too, too dry. It wasted no time, but got to erasing straight off.