Dead Pigeons on 51st and Other Violent Moments

Firstly:

Dear Jack Morgan,

I am sorry to disappoint. I know I said I would write many nights ago and I did not. My inaction is explainable for thousands of resaons.

And then:

Dear Everybody,

After work the other day, the beautiful Kim Miller and I went to a poetry reading at the world famous KGB Bar. The thing was weird start to finish. The room felt deader than the Romanovs when we got there only two or three minutes early. After long moments of fidgeting and smiling uncomfortably, a puckered face, 55+ crowd hobbled in, changing the ambiance from post-Blitzkrieg Guernica to St. Petersburg-members only-bridge club. The reading was hosted by "Behind the Book", a non-profit that does pretty much exactly what 826 Valencia does but not nearly as well. The night included narrative poems translated from French about a man who desired deeply to be the world's most premium serial killer but was left in a state of misery when he found himself unable to slice the face off a woman he believed to be a prostitue AND a woman reading poems "inspired by" poems written by women in state prisons...which really means "stolen from"... generally about bludgeoning, bashing, shooting in the face, or heating up one end of a coat hanger and carving off a nose, lip, or eyebrow. The most violent moment was delivered by the president of "Behind the Book" herself whose dislike of the poets she had invited became apparent when she exclaimed to her partner that they were all "cunt bitches" whom she "fucking hate[ed]". We couldn't take it anymore. Needing to escape as soon as humanly possible, we lunged at the door, only to find that we had been locked inside. Forever. The whole crowd turned their heads and watched in silence as the bartender tromped slowly toward us with a ring of 100 keys, only one of which would lead us to freedom. We ran with our eyes closed all the way down the stairs, out the door, and well past the end of the block.

The next morning I watched a woman place her high heel into the carcass of a pigeon splayed into the concrete in front of the CitiBank building.








Come Sunday, all I needed was to spend some time far away from Manhattan, and from blood, and from thewholegoddamncityandeverythinginit.

So we got in a car and drove to a farm.

(To Follow)