Fissured Tongue Series

Lorem Ipsum
​by E. Briskin
​Fissured Tongue Series Vol VII  |  May 2026

"Warm Winter Triptych R," Owen Brown. Acrylic on watercolor paper, 15 x 11 in., 2023

Lorem Ipsum

It was ten minutes into the New Year, and she’d already broken four of her resolutions. The first: not to drink. The second: not to smoke. The third: not to fuck anyone. The fourth resolution—not to flip herself off—splintered quickly in sympathy with the first three.

Domino, domino, domino, she thought, and then quickly unthought the dominos. They were, like most metaphors, the wrong one. A domino was for falling, not for breaking.

Still, it didn’t much matter what she’d broken. The world was preparing to worsen itself, and no amount of precision would stop it. Before the election, she’d pictured herself towards the top of a vertical cliff; now a toehold had crumbled, her foot skittered out, and all was despondence: a plummet back.

That’s why I break resolutions, she thought. To borrow hope from destruction, where we find it. She glanced over at Katz, who was opaque behind wool, head trapped clumsily in the inverted arm of a blue sweater.

“You know, you’re my third failed resolution,” she said.

“Flattered. You’re my first kept one,” the sweater replied.

“Let’s go for a drink? Off the lobby?”

Katz thrust two fingers through a hole in the fabric, nodding them at the knuckle in assent. “To celebrate your downfall and my success.”

Minutes later they were crossing the carpeted lobby. As they walked, they passed by the city outside, glimpsed in wedges through the convulsions of a revolving doorway.
The city was nondescript. Rather, absence described it: No posters adorned pillars, no trash festooned curbs, no graffiti coaxed sullen walls to vivacity. There was concrete—graying, white—there was asphalt—fading, black—there were padded figures padding forward in padded clothing. The city was a cold city. That was all.
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And none of it mattered, she reminded herself, as she plodded carpet, not plotting revolution.
At the bar, which was twinkling and empty, Katz plucked plastic champagne flutes from an errant tray. Loud parties thumped elsewhere from distant ballrooms.

“It’s so effed up, right?” Katz said. She was nodding her answer when Katz followed with: “Christmas music after New Year’s?”

Disappointing. She’d been thinking something more like: Kakistocracy. Like: Deportation camps. Forced motherhood. Lobster-pot planet.

“Soo fucked up,” she said. And she meant the worsening world, but when she talked what she said was about music. She knew a fact about “White Christmas,” so she told the “White Christmas” fact, and she’d just seen Dina Martina, so she sang out the word “manger,” mispronouncing it. Katz clouded with irrecognition, so she offered up Mariah, just to see Katz’s irises widen, hear Katz groan. I won’t even wish for snow, she sang.

She did wish for it, though. She wished for anything. Something. A resolution. An unbroken resolve to transform us all. She pictured it before her, the resolution, a long glowing sentence in looping font. It stretched out across each of the shelved bottles of liquor, brushed over the bar top, leapt onto the glittered shoulders of the bartender, who had trailed in looking era-struck, disarranged.

She pictured it like lorem ipsum — the graphic design filler. A passage that was known and not known. Dolor sit amet — she knew that part meant something. Consectetur adipiscing elit — half-Latin again. Sed do eiusmod tempor spilled down to the carpet, incididunt ut labore et dolore rushed out to the lobby, magna aliqua colored into the doorway, revolving, letters churning, until they lettered the street, spilled in gusts from the wind and the spinning door.

Jingle Bells struck the speakers and Katz struck with it, chanting: “We are effed, we are effed. We are fucking effed,” at the chorus. So Katz was feeling it, after all. She grabbed a coaster and joined in, tapping her wine flute on the offbeat; its plastic stem sang out as prettily as a thud. Then they sought out more drinks in the warm bar of the freezing city. Outside the world was worsening, and looked the same.

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About the Author 
E Briskin's poems have been published by FENCE, SAND, and Poetry Northwest. E.’s book Orange is published by Entre Ríos Books.

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About the Work
 Briskin writes, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

Writing process
I haven’t written much short fiction, but in 2025 I decided to try. I’d tell myself I was going to sit down and write a sloppy first draft, and then I’d sit down and write a sloppy first word and immediately delete it. Eventually, my screen would display a tolerable first sentence and I’d smile all over it like a maniac until the next sentence started.

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About the Artist
Owen Brown was born in Chicago. He lived for many years in San Francisco, he now lives in Minneapolis. His works are in collections in this country and abroad. He has been the recipient of various awards and residencies; most recently he was a guest artist at the Spinnerei in Leipzig, Germany.

"My pieces were produced at different times, under different circumstances [...] Warm Winter" was just because I like to paint."

Brown writes, "Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.  The source of my practice is the world with all its beauty and confusion--nature, so alien and alluring, the social, equally baffling but no less wonderful, and the uncomfortable friction between that, and our internal interpretations.  This world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked–life eludes easy understanding or conclusion: what are we seeing when we really think about it and how did we miss it before?"

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