Metropolis + Isosceles

by Nicholas Syrianus Katsafanas

Adam Metropolis and Larry Isosceles, two moderately opinionated Greek theologians, share their thoughts on the true nature of the number 1.99999 repeating and various theories of the so-called Western world. Mode: >.667

5x8 Perfect Bound | ISBN: 979-8-9987102-3-0 | Paperback Release Date (2nd Edition): July 2025

Excerpt: The Number 1.9 Repeating (Canto I)

We hadn’t been there ninety seconds,
because it was right as we walked
in the backyard of the high school graduation party
that her cousin approached us
and, without the slightest hesitation,
asked my girlfriend right to her face—
‘Did you bring my
tupperware with you?’
It took perhaps longer than I
care to confess
to fully recognize what exactly it was
she was referencing.
Oh, the oxtail, I reflected,
a second or so later,
as I recalled there being a beautiful,
wood-covered, piece of glass of tupperware
sitting in our refrigerator for over a week,
incubating an oxtail dish
that had, unfortunately, totally expired—
it was so far gone
I was hesitant to even open
the top of the tupperware container,
despite the fact
the top of the container was a beautiful,
wood finished piece.
There was no doubt in my mind
that this oxtail was, at that point,
not just completely expired
but essentially a type of meat soup,
a type of liquified corpse,
which of course disgusted me severely.
Cleaning it out struck me as a grotesque idea.
I can’t say for certain,
but it’s more likely than not
that I threw it into the trash—
tupperware, wood top, and oxtail.
‘Oh, so sorry,
I’ll definitely bring it back soon!’ she said,
and I glanced at her and attempted to decipher
if she had any idea the tupperware
and the oxtail were both long gone,
that both now sat in a garbage heap,
a pile of trash somewhere,
at the bottom of a public dump,
still filled with decayed, grotesque oxtail,
and that her cousin would never again
own the privilege of placing her leftovers
into that piece of tupperware
with the beautiful wood cover.
That tupperware was finished.