Caught in Lesser Tragedies: A Poem
In a beauty shop called Perfect Look
your blindness sits upon a couch.
An Ass that Sees Pants…
"Any man of sense would remember that the eyes are doubly confused from two different causes, both in passing from light to darkness and from darkness to light; and believing that the same things happen with regard to the soul also, whenever he sees a soul confused and unable to discern anything he would not …
Richard Russo
"People who live the kind of lives that I write about want escape from those lives. They don’t want to dwell imaginatively in the lives that they are living. They want their books to be set on Capri. And why the hell not!"
The Broken Promise: A Poem
I promised you, I know, I know—
I'd wash a gravel pile of clothes
The Gargoyle: A Poem
It's half-past two,
sunny as a shiny penny
rubbing pockets of the world.
Barry Crimmins
"We are conditioned to think we suck because we are not completely celebrated everyday. I just celebrate because I don’t have to go to work at NormoCorp everyday. I’m sitting out here in the early morning with the sun, with the birds singin', and the dogs lying here, talkin' with you, about whatever we want to talk about. We already won. We already won. They didn’t get me. I’m not worried about dealing with some nitwit middle manager all day who’s makin' me feel stressed out and screwin' up my life. I’m sittin' here. I have to fly to New Mexico tomorrow to talk about why the drug war is stupid. That’s all I gotta do."
The Herds are Charging Through the Room
Mother is crying. They have sensed something sinister, some danger perhaps: the snarl of a lion, the lurk of a predator on the prowl. Or maybe they have detected some force we cannot discern, some signal portending events more apocalyptic: the trembling of the earth, the violent belching of a not-too-distant volcano. They could not …
Denarration and the Persistence of Memory
Coupland's serfs make an idiomatic institution out of "not having a life" by voluntarily "denarrating" themselves.
David Hajdu
"The smaller people, the smaller voices, are lost to history. But they are important as counterpoint and frequently important in their own right."
The Going: A Poem
"The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."