Money is the hobgoblin of impoverished souls. After her seduction and abduction by the cruel criminal, she saw that she was kidnapped. She realized she was his slave. He sold her to a brothel. He needed the money. He was paid five hundred dollars for her soul.
Did Sally succeed and suck them silly? And did she get sick? And was she freed from the garden of earthly delights? And did she pay for the clap with several organs? And did she grow fat and slatternly sitting at a desk for ten years maintaining health insurance?
And then did a cruel cutthroat stab this secretary, this Sally, to steal her savings? And thanks to health insurance, was it all just another scar?
An anti-valentine event was a very useful reading for me as a writer. When I began looking for material about stinking love I drew a blank. But 99% of my writing sits unpublished in notebooks, and I finally remembered my green notebook -- wherein for ten years I've sketched out the how and who and why romantic interests fail. I gave each of these women Baseball Hall of Fame names. Jane Adler, for instance, is Tris Speaker. I'm always angry at these women when I write the poems but, sometimes because I wrote the poems, I am no longer angry. They are often in fact friends. The portraits are recognizable, especially to the subjects -- despite "the names have been changed to protect the innocent." There are a couple of dillies about Colette. I kept looking towards the back of the room to make sure she hadn't arrived late (she's always late). In the event at the podium I decided to read no www.NapLajoie poems (Coletteās a wrong-way Women). And I had also intended to read a poem called Jackie Robinson, but as Rosie Schaap, the organizer, introduced me to Mike Eustace I immediately thought -- I guess Jackie is out.
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"LOVE"good words @ Good World a reading series featuring a different theme every month, continues on Sunday, February 10. Valentine's Day, schmalentine's day, Reading #11 is LOVE STINKS!, with
poems by Michael Andre, editor of Unmuzzled Ox, an occasional magazine of poetry, art and politics founded in 1971. His books of poetry include Studying the Ground for Holes (1978) and Experiments in Banal Living (1998). The opera Orfreo, for which he wrote the libretto, premiered at the Merkin Concert Hall in 2004.
fiction by Amy Holman, whose occasional columns on knitting appear in The Huffington Post. Her poetry has won the Dream Horse Press National Poetry Chapbook Competition, and has been selected for The Best American Poetry 1999. She is writing a novel, and excerpts have been published in Shade and The Cortland Review.
and
fiction by Kristin McGonigle, who was, until recently, print editor of the literary magazine Pindeldyboz.
The event is free, and it starts at 5:00 p.m.
Good World Bar and Grill is located at 3 Orchard Street, between Canal and Division.