Driving from Huntsville to southern Tennessee, the Huntsville exurbs soon dissolve into rolling corn fields alternated with soybean patches and then the lanes shrink into just two. This stretch of north Alabama and south Tennessee is speckled with small towns that blend into one another, each announcing “historical districts”; their only real claim to fame […]
Poems
Bedroom Window Musty gray dawn trespasses into the noon hour; And one looks like the other from this side of my bedroom window. Weather stained pawn malingers from stale to sour; And one smells like the other as I slump by my bedroom window. Curtains are drawn Like me, to endeavor or cower; And one […]
Thinking about Papa Heinz
Ketchup makes bad fake blood Because it doesn’t stir the right Kind of horror or nervousness. It’s too sweet looking and gooey. The red it all wrong and dried it Doesn’t leave that flat rust stain But springy space age growths That make cleaning the fiddley Bits of the dispenser so annoying. Except when you’re […]
On Reading Kenneth Fearing’s “The Hospital”
“I’ll never get used to this hospital smell of antiseptic, not even after all the times I visited Alice in Bellevue. It’s the smell of the grave. Think of something without that smell. Think of something that hasn’t any smell at all, think of something blue. Blue and green.” Kenneth Rexroth famously described Kenneth Fearing […]
Italian Auto Workers Demand Red Card
The mega-rich Italian Agnelli family has bulging coffers. They own the Fiat Chrysler Corporation, Ferrari, and have a controlling interest in Turin’s Juventus football team, one of the premier clubs in Europe. The Agnellis aren’t exactly friends of the working person. Last week, Juventus splurged about $130 million to purchase the contract of one Cristiano […]
Pennsylvania Sheriff Warns: Accept No Imitation
Earlier this month a mysterious call came through to Dr. Mark Cruciani’s office in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The caller identified himself as a sheriff’s deputy from Lackawanna County and informed Cruciani that he had missed a court date, and now had two options: he could pay an outstanding fine of $1,000, or he’d face a criminal […]