No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
He wore a name badge like the rest of us. Easton University, Class of 1995. The same blue border, the same insignia that always looked to me like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz crashing through a crusader’s shield. Like everyone else, his name was printed in bold 16-point font. ELMAR W GRAY. He would probably spend much of the next four days insisting it was not a typo, that his name was spelled with an -ar, not an -er, much like he might have done while a student at Easton.
The conspiracy of ravens
We are all ravens, creatures of cleverness and survival, hiding our croaks beneath
rules of morality and social complexity.
After missing my connection in Dallas, I am told by Greyhound staff that sleeping in the station is not permitted. So, I book a room at a motel that is relatively close to the station and reasonably priced. Half hour later, my Lyft driver pulls into the parking lot of the motel, looks into the rearview mirror.
Young lady, you really want me to drop you off here?
Out of all the dirty jobs in the world, the worst was working in the spaghetti mines.
The following morning, Klink seemed totally fine, hopping about in the sunshine. He apparently had already forgotten the events of the preceding night. I told myself, “It was nothing.” Still, I couldn’t shake the thought that I didn’t know where Klink had come from, nor the unsettling feeling that maybe sometimes in that birdcage, he wasn’t alone.
We were on the corner of Essex Street and Delancey, across the street from the old Essex Street Retail Market. It was still open for business, though from the outside it looked half derelict and definitely dicey. I could see my aunt staring at the large sign on the side of the building; she was obviously trying to read it, to make sense of the words.