DEAD SIMPLE
by John Brooke
My big brother Silas and I combined our assets, and bought a cow called Bessie. The deal was that I owned the front half of the cow, my brother owned the hind half. I fed my half every day and my brother milked his half every morning.
What milk and cream he didn’t share with his wife and kids, my brother sold to a dairy. He never shared anything with me.
Ours was a perfect example of a fatal flaw in biz-buzz, corporate speak, synergy theory. It stated that one branch of the new structure could feed both. In our merger of assets, only one part fulfilled the needs of the same part, at the expense of the other part.
I bit the biscuit and solved our one sided synergistic business arrangement. I killed my half of the cow. His half died.
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John Brooke, lives beside the Sea of Cortez in a small fishing village, in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He‘s been writing poems, books and short stories for about 5 years. Some of his stuff, mostly poetry and flash has been published.