The Circle K convenience store added little to life in the small town by way of its services, but it was where folks gathered to play the numbers. The rhythms of life in Spartasville, Georgia were so backwards, and so sleepy that locals called the Circle K ‘Wall Street.’ Eight days ago, management installed a new lotto game. The sixteen year old girl who worked week-end shifts, Tosha, was almost ready to quit. Well, sometimes she felt that way. It was bad enough already; now it was worse. It was just that they annoyed her, Old Man Samms and his compatriots. Now they hung around in the Circle K convenience store hours, all Saturday, their eyes set on the new TV screen that only flashed lotto info. She watched them, watching the screen, their eyes growing queer and animal.

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Wallace Would Rather Sleep, Thank You

We will go gentle into that good night. Dylan Thomas be damned. Today we yearn for quiet, for the easy solitude of an early slumber. The world is a noisy, aggressive place. Sometimes it’s just best to stay in bed. Staying in bed ain’t what it used to be, though. Lingering blanket campers can now plug in and log on. The difference is that while watching the world pulse, those in bed choose to stagnate. They watch and do not engage. It is a modern day phenomena. Nothing like what the folks in today’s Writerly Happenings would endorse. Wallace Stevens may have appeared somnolent. But he was omnipresent and tireless. Good old Allan Poe, well, he’s a curious one, too. His life was shrouded in mystery but his posterity is emblazoned in celebrity. Words Without Borders is not nodding off. No, they’re walking the world. Read what their writers have to say. The French are known for the bed-ish acumen; Slate pulls the off the sheets. Some people nestle their cell phones on their pillows. That’s good, because now they can read while they drowse. Finally, Lorrie Moore is no sleepwalker. Her fiction’s vitality sells by the crate load. Why then, do so many of her readers keep her on their bedside tables? One clue, and it has to do with dreaming. — Kevin Murphy

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