Loser III is green, / And on the scene.

Mai Bell and Conor Hultman's Loser III is available, and submissions might not yet be closed for Loser IV.

never once having to punch the clock

"When I thought about it, I had to marvel at how lucky our employers had come up in the cosmic lottery. Inheriting a factory, for example, was nothing to sneeze at—that was Sir Schonenstein . . . or bring sent to Europe for an advanced degree—we had one of those . . . or being groomed to take over daddy's medical practice.

"Never once having to punch the clock is a sweet way to spend seventy or eighty or ninety years . . . and then there were those scintillating evenings at the Trenton Country Club, where all the elite gathered for play . . . and the winter vacations down in the islands . . . the Harvard class reunions . . . 

"No matter what the wise men said, time is not an illusion, and life can be long and hard if you happen not to be one of the chosen few."

~~ from God Bless America by Mark SaFranko

it's poor swollen America

"The radio clicks on—it's poor swollen America, / Up already and busy selling the exhausting obligation / Of happiness while intermittently debating whether or not / A man who kills fifty people in five minutes / With an automatic weapon he has bought for the purpose / Is mentally ill. Or a terrorist. Of if terrorists / Are mentally ill."

~~ from "Dancing" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass

The Kafka Virus

"The madness of each ordinary day versus / the language of someone raised by history / versus someone raised by a virgin, / I'm mostly interested in the devil's story, // because I know there's some devil in me."

~~ from "The Kafka Virus Verses: Thursday" in So to Speak by Terrance Hayes

fast friends

 

Conor and Mai's Loser I and Loser II with newbie Deadbeat Poets Society's Volume I: Maximiliano Guzmán. L.U.S.K.'s novelist-in-residence has placed short pieces in each of these.

metaphor

"Who does not love metaphor? Its quickness / That gives us the world to taste with our common senses. / I'll tell you what terrifies me: it is the idea that 'this is like that / Is like this is like that' could be all of the story, endlessly / Repeated, the poor human imagination having evolved into this / Brilliant swiftness of perception and then been stuck there, / Like a hamster in a cage, groping in the endless turnstiles / Of resemblance. We are to celebrate this?"

~~ from "An Argument About Poetics Imagined At Squaw Valley After a Night Walk Under the Mountain" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass