There is a part about halfway through the middle

of your latest book optioned by the Hollywood press before publication
where Protagonist Man leaps tall buildings with a breath that could kill
the entire population of aboriginal Australia if they weren’t already enlisted
to be off fighting the border guards circling the grounds
of Europe’s favorite multi-national theme parks.

Anyway, that being said

when Protagonist Man suffers a meet-cute with Heroin Girl, he suddenly finds himself
on the outside of every yoga workshop he’s ever attended, lost to the epitome
of posture over poise. You dream of Heroin Girl as if she were the next candidate
to lead us out of the darkness, binding all free thought to the stipulation of I got mine.
You know what I mean?

You were born in Natchez, Mississippi under the shadow of riverboat gambling.

Your mother never gave birth, your father fiercely defending the rabbit hunters from intrusion
by the city folk who wanted cute bunnies dressed in the latest fashions from Abercrombie & Fitch.
You buried your head, like Protagonist Man in that part near the end
of the last section when he soundly thumps the bad guy who liked to write
villanelles while standing in acid rain, and revealed with elementary revelation,
opting not to utilize the ever-popular M-Night Twist of Logic, that deus ex machina that falls
back upon the blindingly transparent suggestion made on the opening
page of the opening section, that Bentley did in fact murder Weathersby the Unacclaimed.

Yes, you buried your head like a morally-exacting politician, too good for the dirt

at the surface, and failed to recognize that your mother didn’t love
you as much as your curb-painting second cousin. You see where I’m going with this?
I don’t want to speculate about how your tragic upbringing has influenced your need to amass
collections, but I think there is no doubt drama was made up throughout the echelons
of paragraph or practical arrangement. I mean, when Heroin Girl leaves the bag
of groceries on the bottom steps of her three-floor walkup, it’s obvious you’re veiling
a reference to your adopted sister who was left on your family’s doorstep
when you were away at carny school. You came home, “walked up” and stepped into a pile
of corrupted cutlery & baby dolls missing limbs or an eye.
Doesn’t that ring true, free from the pandering & post-coital massaging of numbers
that usually accompany poll-taking and imminent disclosure of personal information?

But that story must be left for another conversational monologue as we have now run

out of recording tape, and, frankly, I have lost interest in your petty misgivings about success
& unlisted addresses, but we will have you in studio next time, seclusion in effect. Thank you
for regaling us with your insightful ponderings & pernicious withholdings of deep-seeded ghosts, preventing our audience from getting inside the machinations of arguably the greatest writer
of his own isolation. Your tales never cease to amaze & delight & demonstrate what continues to pass for dialogue & mesentery of the highest measure.

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Marc Meierkort is a life-long Chicago resident and currently teach English and Film Studies at Thornton Fractional North High School in Calumet City, IL, where he has taught for the past 19 years. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (B.S.) and National-Louis University (M.A.T.) He currently lives in the western suburbs of Chicago.

Photo: Hatim Belyamani