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

cancer at fifty

"The clapping sound is the new crew boss / keeping time. Jane Kenyon, cancer at forty-seven. / Larry Levis, heart at forty-nine. Ray Carver / who had met Tess and beat alcohol which / was going to kill him, cancer at fifty."

~~ from "Harvest: Those Who Die Early in the Middle Years" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass