Last Bender

    Tools of the Trade   Chisels, spades and threads ploughs and boots peat forks caked with mud are nightingales that linger beyond their father’s flat Midwestern tread the anomaly I pace of objects blown with rust and their persistence before I cut the limes and count the change fill the sinks, pump in [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE           “They got dental!” Church said, applying margarine pats to a corn muffin, subjecting both to a furious scrutiny. His round cheeks retained their rosy gloss, even in the consumptive fluorescent light. Even without a beard, he was one angry Santa.           Needles said, “Yeah so what. They got dental. Do they got [...]

Boredom in Art   Josh Corey’s remarks about his own boredom with the novel remind me of David Foster Wallace’s boredom, discussed at length in the recent New Yorker piece about his suicide. David Foster Wallace tried, unsuccessfully, to overcome his boredom. He even went so far as to try a homoeopathic remedy, by writing [...]

Camera Ready   I see you comrade burning in the clear air your clean eye tipped up by the flames rushing skyward by the updrafts by the impetus of all this combusted gasoline click   The man named Conrad waits to blow out the wick wants to follow every sick detergent hero who blasts by [...]

Myth in Poetry   When poets reject myth they are rejecting poetry itself, since poetry and myth are intimately intertwined. A poetry without myth is a poetry of the intellect. The intellect can only construct a poem, not create it. When Tom Verlain writes the line, ‘My eyes are like telescopes’ he is both writing [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT           “Lemme see goddamn it,” I said.           “All right,” We ducked into the laundry and sat on a steel folding table. I stared into the dark washer windows. They were like the eyes of giant, industrial goldfish. The sheet of paper he gave me had a crude drawing of what looked like [...]

“Fast, Cheap and Out of Control”   This weekend my mother handed me an article she had clipped as I ran out the door of her apartment. I know I’m not the only writer with a mother out there who clips articles and I approached this one with the same weariness I approach anything I [...]

Item I give to Sire Denis Hesselin, Elect of Paris The fourteen hogsheads of Aulnis wine I risked my neck to steal from Turgis If he drinks enough of it to place In jeopardy his good sense and reason Then put water in the barrels Wine wrecks many a happy home. Francoise Villon The testament [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN           “Laraby?”             “Jack. It’s night. Where the hell are you? Why didn’t you call or come in? It’s a fucking mess here. There’s no control. Reporters, cops, lawyers, relatives, insurance dicks, my god! I’m tellin’ you, I’m outta my fucking mind with it! If I go to one more meeting I’m gonna [...]

Ariel   They wave the metal sea fronds on the roof. Sway and buckle punch through wood and spring her from the root. Singing megahertz confuses.   All distorted nerves her field fires my maddened universe.   Each termite note chews through the grain and spits my zeros up like answers while cicadas crank her [...]