A bulb flickers, vomiting brown light on my desk, giving my writing pad a brown hue, like an old Nation paper at the National Archives. I’m seated, pencil in hand, hunched for three hours and nothing seems to give. So many half-finished poems. Most are skeletons, inadequate, and need flesh to give them a spirit and a path. The night folds her sleeping mat and stands it against the wall then swings open the door and welcomes the day. It is 6AM.
I moved here last month. It is better than my former boxed space and there is power. I write and write into the wee hours. I want to take a dump but there is no water so I contract my anal muscles and pee, stooped at an angle to avoid knocking my head on the shower head. Hot urine bathe the blackened bowl, die to a trickle, a…
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