Night Shift

“Once upon a time, in some summer hiatus away from secondary school, I worked my first slave. It was the graveyard stint at the Gas N Grub convenience shop. From nine at night to seven in the morning, I bagged first, rang second cashier, cashed in on $3.35 per hour—at the time, I was thinkin’ it’s all for four future years of school. Man, I see now my ass was probably worth five, six, or seven times as much. Brotha, I toiled sedulously, often fatigued, through those convenient sixty-six minute hours—boss was payin’ nine hours of cash money dough for a ten-hour shift! What with low pay, jammed register, broken slushee machine, and all them complaining coed bitties—I was an adolescent poet-to-be who’d already found his inferno.”

Sheldon Lee Compton

Sheldon Lee Compton passed on April 13, 2026. He was an author of the memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound as well as many novels, short stories, and newspaper articles; he helped and published a wide range of writers from Ketucky and beyond. I'm grateful that he published two excerpts from the as yet unpublished Spark Park, "Night Shift" and "Uncle Sam's Decline."

a library copy tucked away with all the other invisible books

 

a tale of three Brookses

From the April 6 print issue of The New Yorker, I read Becca Rothfeld's review of a book by Arthur C. Brooks. At some point in the middle, I took a moment to scroll twitter and was immediately presented with a clip of Dillon Brooks watching a shot by Kevin Durant fly over his head. Soon after, I returned to the middle of Rothfeld's book review and for a moment found myself confused and considering that I was reading a paragraph about David Brooks because the title of the book seemed similar to one this third Brooks might write.

Jon of Havana

Jon Lee Anderson phones home from Havana: "Leonardo Padura, Cuba's best known novelist, told me about his frustrated efforts to buy a home power station for his elderly mother-in-law, to provide light when the electricity goes out."

 

#fridayreads

Find affordable copies of Auggie's Revenge at Apple Books, on eBay, for Kindle, as well as at Bookshop and Smashwords, too.