Is Alex a victim of the modern age? He is certainly despicable in nature, and becomes the focus of society’s pity. And is it because he becomes an issue, the problem of sex and violence on youth?
Oh, but to readers, it is the question of freedom of choice. To Alex’s society, the question is whether we can reform a man permanently. But to us, it’s what we lose if we do. Continue reading
Check out my latest short story, “Three Acts for Kids,” published by the literary magazine Bridge Eight!
I returned recently to a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (or The Evening Redness in the West), because it had a lot to teach me, in a literary way, about masculinity and violence.
I was brought to those words when I thought of the pattern of violence in schools, and how not only the tools of these massacres a pattern, but also the boys and men carrying them out. Here are ten gleanings, drawn mostly from the words of the antagonist, Judge Holden: Continue reading
[The following poem was originally published in Versewrights.]
WEEK PEOPLE
Monday morning hates his job
a case of himself
saying hi to Bob in the hall
who says hey back to him in the hall.
The coffee percolates, drips
a long day inaugurates a long week
and it all goes downhill from there.
Meet the sisters of the arch:
Fat Tuesday, Hump Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday
drinking martinis round a table every afternoon
and sleep heavy that evening
after they hang up the phone
full of the day’s daily review.
Friday announces herself
steals the show
is twenty-three years old and
addicted to coke.
Saturday morning wakes up late
does not remember Friday or
what he did to her.
He sits in the house all day in his socks
when he’s not running marathons
or out of town.
Sunday afternoon is an old Brit sleeping
in a musty armchair
a wooden cross hung limply on the wall behind him
a glass of brandy forming condensation by his side
as he snores
the game blaring on the telly.
My latest poem, “Impostor,” has been published in Streetlight.
Check it out here!
And while you’re at it, they’ve got some other good stuff in this issue.
When I read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower in preparation for John Green’s latest season of Crash Course: Literature, I was first drawn by the Biblical parallel in the title. In what way was this going to be like the parable of the sower? Continue reading
