by Lana Spendl
The executive committee sits in coffin chairs at the head of the table in the great hall. Past chancellors in oils gaze down. The coffins stand vertical, bent at the waist, in a chic yet classic design. Mahogany, walnut. The director, who is the tallest, bends head forward as she sits down, because—even though the coffin fits her measurements—she fears inexplicably that back-of-the-head slam. She jokes about her neuroses and is the first to laugh. And the emeritus professor who now lives in another state, and whose wife has left him, and who is perhaps dead, sends questions every meeting about the chancellor’s hiring initiative. And the chancellor with gavel keeps the time, but a comment sneaks past, and then another, and the director checks her watch (they’ve only reserved the hall till January 2035) but comments slip and slime like snails in all directions, and snails will reach the end of the world if you let them, only breeding more snails along the way, only trailing more paths.
Lana Spendl is the author of the chapbook We Cradled Each Other in the Air. Her work has appeared in World Literature Today, The Rumpus, The Greensboro Review, Baltimore Review, New Ohio Review, Zone 3, and other journals. She holds an MFA in fiction and an MA in Spanish Literature from Indiana University, where she served as nonfiction editor to Indiana Review.