...after a word from the Professional Organization of English Majors.
GK: I'm an aging northern liberal and it's not a simple life. I am in favor of a living wage so I can't go to the drive-up window and eat lunch in my car and I really love their French fries. Amazon is unfair to authors so I can't order books there, even though it is incredibly easy. I don't watch NFL football. It's a principled life and like all principled lives, ever so often you need to break out of it and go crazy and for awhile I would go off to the woods now and then and blow up things (SFX) but it frightened the owls (SFX) and then I went off to North Dakota and found a big straight stretch of highway and (SFX) drove 110 m.p.h. but then you think of the carbons you're putting into the air and it's not good. And then I discovered fiction. Violent sexist fiction. I don't publish it because that wouldn't be good. I just enjoy it myself. (TYPING, CHUCKLING) Sit at the computer and write and write.
FN: Oh boy. That's a good one. Wow. "She walked into the room, her skin glistening from the hot shower, and threw herself into my arms. " Can't believe I wrote that.
GK: It's cheap, it's crude. I'd be horrified if any of you saw it. Which you never will, thanks to the delete button. (SFX)
FN: "He walked in and I knew it was him without even looking and I pushed the button that opened the trap door and he fell screaming into the basement with the alligators." Whew. That was scary. I found a dark place in myself I never knew was there.
GK: And I go off to my Episcopal church and I repent.
FN: And for that which we have done and that which we have left undone, but especially for that which I have written, oh boy, I am truly truly contrite.
GK: It's a liberal Episcopal church and it has a transgendered Iroquois priest who is a mime and the choir is made up of recovering alcoholics and the organist is on parole and the liturgy is all dance, no words, and pets are welcome, and clothing is optional, and I feel good being there, but in my private moments, at the computer. (TYPING, FN SALACIOUS CHUCKLING) I'm someone else. Fiction. It hurts nobody and it lets you get things (RACING CAR) out of your system. (EXPLOSION)
A message from POEM...