Mislaid

by Nell Zink

She had thought poets were different, but by then she knew they just bullshit like good old boys everywhere.

. . . livid? Was he livid? Are there words to describe how Lee was? Less privileged men sometimes fancy themselves egotistical sociopaths, but they don’t know the half of it. They don’t even know how it’s done. In most cases they’ve even apologized for something at some point in their lives.

“With friends like you, who needs marriage?”

Karen would be limp from playing, as though she had been scoured inside and out, an empty husk awash in soda pop and cake crumbs.

Publishing poems on paper makes authors invisible, which is what men want.