Last Bender

I have been reading Blake for many years now. When I feel like cheering myself up, when I want to know that sane people have existed in other times, I read him. All winter my idea of a good Sunday was that I wouldn’t open my wallet or take out my car key and that [...]

This is from Chekhov’s account of Sakhalin Island, a Russian Penal Colony and Place of Exile:
Very little can be said about the intellectuals. To have to punish your fellow man because you are under oath and in duty bound to do so, constantly violating your feelings of repugnance and horror, knowing that you are far [...]

reading is becoming more and more an academic pursuit. college educated people read ’serious’ fiction (the masses, if they read, read genre fiction). but these readers learn to read, are educated to read, in college and high school. they have been pre-selected for this process. They are the privileged few who will be initiated into [...]

The fizz is opulent
Your sweating crotch
Dissolves on mine
Our irridescent backs
And eyeballs bright
Above the citronella
Candle light.

If only the monkeys had died, then we wouldn’t be here now, thought Dr. Bryson. Marketing wouldn’t have gotten a hold of it, and there’d be no shebang in the auditorium, no state involvement. She had made her last stand alone, in committees, and now she would be honored as the leader of a team, inventor of a drug everyone thought was sure to put Monozone back on top.

The lounge was dark, and almost cool after the choking heat of the night air, breezeless and slightly dank with canal water. No one was there. The walls were painted a neutral grey darkened by years of cigarette tar. Brass sconces with amber chandelier lights lit the red tabletops and punctured black cushions of the [...]

Shortly after dawn Bryson awoke, unable to sleep. She belched gin. Her stomach was in flames. Bradlee’s wallet and keys were on a steel table and his pants and suit were draped over the back of a black folding chair. She took his white, monogrammed robe off the back of the bedroom door and walked [...]

 Once Veronica Clay was certain her husband Felix was at work, she set about her business in a very deliberate way. First she fluffed the cantaloupe and kiwi colored throw pillows on the couch, a grey futon folded against the wall on a tatami mat. She dusted the slate floor, straightened the pen and ink [...]

For most of his life, starting as far back as he could remember, Felix Clay had a feeling that something was wrong. Usually he felt like something was wrong with him but it was very easy for him to turn it around and feel that something was wrong with the world. Things didn’t fit right, [...]

The time bell went off and the screen shrank to a dot. He stood his lifeless body up, removed the squeaky skull cap of CellPack, reached for the ceiling, touched his toes and marched out the door to join the others. His bladder was backing up into his kidneys, poisoning his blood. Something was using [...]