Dirty Little Limericks

Fiction by Miles Klee

I was lost on some island, eating rotted mangos and tiny crabs. The captain hadn’t listened to me. You know it’s not always easy advocating your position. 

Nothing would ever wash ashore, except something did, a slim and creased black paperback: Dirty Little Limericks. 

After drying the salted pages with sun, I rhymed each limerick out loud. They were obscene. North Carolina, exploding vagina—such gruesome, hateful stuff. Pretty soon I despised the book. Had I only been left alone, without the stupid limericks, I might have composed better work. Instead I memorized this trash.