No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
“This is radio station WAST, the wackiest station in the nation blasting out at you with a zillion megawatts of pure rock right here in downtown Little Falls and I’m Don Zingo your favorite DJ here to zap you and zing you with the sounds of tomorrow today.
“You’re an intellectual and a revisionist.”
“You take that back!”
“Lower your voices! The neighbors.”
“The neighbors? The neighbors are with us.”
“Not anymore.”
Mom picked up a plant from the sale cart. It looked as miserable as the ones already populating her shabby garden, "Dead Man’s Corner", as Dad called it.
“If a lot of famous artists from the twentieth century killed themselves trying to produce work while supporting themselves when the cost of living was lower…I mean, imagine how much more difficult it is for us now.”
“Yeah.”
In Afghanistan, the team I supported lived in an abandoned police station in a suburb of Ghazni. We were twenty-eight grunts standing guard, a couple support randos like me, and the operators; ten bearded creatine-enthusiasts who sat around making sure they were seen reading copies of Emerson and Nietzsche before zooming off on four wheelers with their Afghan Commando protégés.
She had recalled how they first locked eyes over the counter at Midas, when she was still working multiple, minimum wage jobs with a college degree. He came in when his car over-heated, which he needed fixed ASAP as he was moving to Iowa next month. He had brought McCullough’s "John Adams" to read for the 4th of July, but it clearly wasn’t holding his interest, as his eyes kept wondering up to hers when he thought she wasn’t looking. She took a chance.