What One Wants To Do With Stories

For The Speedy Reader Paragraphs Become A Country The Eye Flies Over Looking For Landmarks, Reference Points, Airports, Restrooms, Passages Of Sex.

I Publish A Piece In Order To Kill It, So That I Won't Have To Fool Around With It Any Longer.

The Word Itself Has Another Color. It’s Not A Word With Any Resonance, Although The E Was Once Pronounced. There Is Only The Bump Now Between B And L, The Relief At The End, The Whew. It Hasn’t The Sly Turn Which Crimson Takes Halfway Through, Yellow’s Deceptive Jelly, Or The Rolled-down Sound In Brown. It Hasn’t Violet’s Rapid Sexual Shudder Or Like A Rough Road The Irregularity Of Ultramarine, The Low Puddle In Mauve Like A Pancake Covered In Cream, The Disapproving Purse To Pink, The Assertive Brevity Of Red, The Whine Of Green.

If There Were Genders To Genres, Fiction Would Be Unquestionably Feminine.

But The Body Fails Us And The Mirror Knows, And We No Longer Insist That The Gray Hush Be Carried Off Its Surface By The Cloth, For We Have Run To Fat, And Wrinkles Encircle The Eyes And Notch The Neck Where The Skin Wattles, And The Flesh Of The Arms Hangs Loose Like An Overlarge Sleeve, Veins Thicken Like Ropes And Empurple The Body As Though They Had Been Drawn There By A Pen, Freckles Darken, Liver Spots Appear, The Hairah, The Hair Is Exhausted And Gray And Lusterless, In Weary Rolls Like Cornered Lint.