The Late Americans

by Brandon Taylor

Naive enough to believe in poetry’s transformative force, but cynical enough in their darker moments to consider poetry a pseudo-spiritual calling, something akin to the affliction of televangelists.

The instructor, never quite in contention for the Pulitzer but never quite out of it either, nods slowly as he presides over them like a fucking youth minister.

Like a dog finally catching its tail and chewing it down to the gristle.

mushroom broth

It wasn’t that their lives were worse than his or that his life was better than theirs—it was that they all had the same pain, the same hurt, and he didn’t think anyone should go around pretending it was something more than it was: the routine operation of the universe. Small, common things—hurt feelings, cruel parents, strange and wearisome troubles.

but sometimes they did. Seamus followed. He didn’t know how to lead. How to have a real conversation with someone who didn’t care about what he cared about.

It was a civic inattentiveness of the soul that had made him say something so stupid.

Fyodor raised a hand. He pushed the door open. The front hall was stale. The stars above them were cold and white. Work in the morning.

That’s how young they still were, that they made plans to do something bad.

They all were going around all the time trying to prove themselves, litigating the case for their own worth.

He put his head against the desk, hating the feel of himself.