Planning Our Escape

Yesterday, we faced the sad realities of the economic downturn.  The news reports are real, and real people are being shat on by declining property values and financial woes.  We are not here to point fingers (okay, we blame everyone), but rather distract you with the riches of the written word. NPR has the true Southern “voice.” Carl Hiassen’s Florida will never go bankrupt, regardless of how formulaic it becomes.  While we’re on the topic of comedy, here’s an anthology of parody. Elsewhere, Don Delillo is at Yankee Stadium, and farming goes gay.  There you have it, buckaroo. Enjoy the wealth while you still can.  –  Andrew Geer

A man tracked a curtain rod that blazed through a forest,
and as he furiously traveled, with him there went

the hair of Jesus’ head inching along,
a river of skulls a black girl swam,
bells in the sun at cascade and ring,
tallow swept up from a fast-burning palm,
Britain’s crown jewels stitching one hundred shirt collars,
moldering tree stumps that suckled a boy,
philosophical plants strapped under root cellars,
our dream’s last rest batted to scraps as a toy,
Magdalene’s glance at the petulant sky,
communities of mirrors, flush in séance,
blacksmiths joining the ends of barn hay,
the trial of youth hidden under long pants,
Lucifer’s fingers on the strings of our harm,
conciliatory pause adjudicating blame,
and the mane of the lion flashing after the lamb,

however the night was calm.
However the night was, the night was calm

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What we love about literature is its ability to bear it all — remove barriers so we can become the speaker at its threadbare best, peel off layers so we can expose and internalize what the protagonist is going through. Actually, all that removing and peeling off sounds quite delicious.

Is it hot in here?

What we really mean is we love how literature entails Naked Girls Reading. These brazen, unclothed girls say that being naked is the easy part but giving a reading is what they get nervous about.

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by Meg Pokrass

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Meg Pokrass is a fiction writer who lives in San Francisco where truth is questionable. Her debut collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” will be published in 2011 by Press 53. Meg’s work was selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Flash Fiction 2009. She has published over one hundred stories and poems. You can see more of her animations here at http://pokrasstinations.com/