ABOMINATIONS by David Ray The vote was a hundred to one, a clear majority. At the stroke of midnight, no more death, at least in the style we have come to know and love. For the next thousand years, walled in like a garden, we will contrive another style altogether, think up other names …
So, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature? I have to wonder if the Swedish Academy, which apparently won’t be enjoying the pleasure of his company at this week’s acceptance ceremony, isn’t getting a perverse pleasure out of putting some of us literary types in the uncomfortable position of having to criticize the choice …
Read moreI hereby nominate Toni Morrison for a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
Appointment in Samarra by David Ray “An appointment in Samarra” meant that you could not fool Mr. Death, that you flew to Samarra to avoid him in Paris or Chicago, but ran into him there where all along he intended to find you, had planned it from day one. I find Samarra on the map …
Underground by Judy Ray In Chile and New Zealand, 2010 A rumble too loud, a silence too long. Families gather at the mine, and in surrounding desert a media tent city springs. Underground there is no glow to tell how night prolongs the day. They will be called heroes, champions, these miners in the …
Whirly Bird hovers like a copter, and gazes in your window. He passes for a hummingbird although his tiny eyes are lenses. There’s nothing not subverted now, recruited for the art of war. He hovers like a copter and when he whirs away you’ll never know if he is just an iridescent little bird like …