Why even catalog these grievances? I just wanted to get a book published. The documentation of this tedious process wasn’t something that could hold much interest for the average reader, whoever that was, or any reader, if there were any left. I had wrongly assumed...
I don’t know how to create the impression of time passing. But it passed, weeks passed by, during which nothing much happened. The sense of futility engendered by these dealings with the literary establishment hung over other potential undertakings. There didn’t seem...
One sends out this precious, all too precious, closely guarded work to complete strangers: they might initially take an interest, but after being presented with the entire manuscript, they can’t be bothered to get back to you at all, not even with a brief cordial...
“Dictatorship in the arts, democracy in everything else.” —Dave Godin It might come as a shock to some young people but there was once a time when not every single person was an artist. People are always talking about “the role of the artist in the digital age,” as if...
Poem April 3 The language you are now reading will be born tomorrow morning when the sun that resides in each one of us turns back into music. You and I will be in transit, as usual, rolling along the new roads, practicing our stories in case we’re asked about our...
Let the disgust pour through me. Let it seethe. Let it sink in and settle. I wasn’t capable of doing anything more than lying on the sofa, stewing in bitterness and resentment. One likes to think that one’s work will be well-received by these commercial...
Four weeks passed. I was about to resign myself to not hearing from Charles Wersing, a top New York literary agent, when I checked my inbox one afternoon. “Good to hear from you,” he wrote, and apologized for taking a month to get back to me. He complimented me on my...
Perhaps you remember me… No, that wasn’t right. It was senseless to open a letter of entreaty by suggesting that I was forgettable, especially when I knew only too well that the party in question would remember me. Hello Charlie, it’s your old friend here… No, that...
Silicon Valley A cloud is the earth displaced for tracks of cable underground, underwater A stream is the friction between content and a beckoning hand To kindle is to adjust the climate dial in a server farm An antenna is the arc of pesticide as it is sprayed...
Kiefer Lights a Big Cigar & waves the heavy machinery into place He rearranges the rubble speaking whichever language suits the occasion He & Tony saunter through a tunnel in the South of France “It’s my gesture” is what he says about his art His use of...
I’m not in the habit of writing restaurant reviews but I was so moved by a recent dining experience that I simply had to share it. I needed to get something to eat in a hurry and decided to check out a local lunch counter that has been doing spectacular business for a...
The Mind Wanders We pass 6th street at eight o’clock. This is not remarkable but sometimes one can do something countless times and remain enchanted. The colors aren’t the same. Once blue, now purple, then red. No two things are alike an hour later but they...
“No one achieves frivolity straight off. It is a privilege and an art; it is the pursuit of the superficial by those who, having discerned the impossibility of any certitude, have conceived a disgust for such things; it is the escape far from one abyss or another...
March 2nd, 2021 I step off but don’t move. The bus pulls away in a roar. I remove my mask. The air I breathe feels like bliss. I stand on the muddy sidewalk looking up at the sky. If I were a man of faith now would be the time to start speaking in tongues....
Dostoevsky Takes a Selfie By Clint Margrave I’m not surprised to find him in the underground, but I am surprised to find him in L.A. He sits across from me on the metro in shorts and tennis shoes, taking a selfie. I want to ask him what he’s doing here. Too...
“Ride on the street, man.” With difficulty, I attempted to maneuver my way around a young couple who, with their three dogs, were hogging the entire sidewalk. “I beg your pardon,” I said, as I cleared these five figures, who had only made the most minimal effort to...
Tinnitus hissed through the music, the laughter, the static. It wasn’t crowded in there, but it was loud. Two women at the bar, a few feet away, were engaged in a conversation that consisted of whooping and screeching at the top of their lungs in response to every...
I Could Have Written That By John Tottenham Like you, I am tired of my own voice, these incessant I’s and me’s. But what’s the alternative? I don’t have the audacity to employ another he or she or We. Nothing could be worse, psycholinguistically, than that sententious...
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