Mr. Pastern was far from dead

"Twenty years ago, she would have been known as a golf widow, and the sum of her manner was perhaps one of bereavement. She usually wore weeds, and a stranger watching her board a train might have guessed that Mr. Pastern was dead, but Mr. Pastern was far from dead. He was marching up and down the locker room of the Grassy Brae Golf Club shouting, 'Bomb Cuba! Bomb Berlin! Let's throw a little nuclear hardware at them and show them who's boss.' He was brigadier of the club's locker-room light infantry, and at one time or another declared war on Russia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and China."

~~ from "The Brigadier and the Golf Widow" in The Stories of John Cheever

chronicled in scuffed baseboards

"All my dealings are with [rental] agents, and I have never known the people from whom we have rented, but their ability to leave behind them a sense of physical and emotional presences is amazing. Our affairs are certainly not written in air and water, but they do seem to be chronicled in scuffed baseboards, odors, and tastes in furniture and paintings, and the climates we step into in these rented places are as marked as changes of weather on the beach. Sometimes there is a long hallway of benignness, a purity and clearness of feeling to which we all respond. Someone was enormously happy here, and we rent their happiness as we rent their beach and catboat."

~~ from "The Seaside Houses" in The Stories of John Cheever

Scout

PS: L.U.S.K. failed to mention that "Scout" by Alex Kudera appears in Loser II, a print collection of poetry and prose delivered by Mai Gooch and Conor Hultman.

Loser II in blue

Mai Gooch and Conor Hultman's Loser II is about and out (and only $12).

Loser at an angle

Behold Loser I.

 

"Eating Fried Chicken" live June 26, 2026

As part of a June 26 nine-minute video, Linh Dinh reads his classic "Eating Fried Chicken." The text of the poem can be found here.