The Late Americans

by Brandon Taylor

It was the height of foolishness, academia. You sank down and down in debt, in desperation, in hunger, so that you could feel a little special, a little brilliant in your small, dark corner of the universe, knowing something that no one else knew.

It was a delusion, he knew, the delusion of everyone whose life had been touched by poetry, that somehow poetry needed them to go on existing. But it did not.

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.

Sometimes he thought the only things he really needed in life were poetry and to be occasionally held down and fucked like dogmeat.

That life of his was gone, and in its place was only a series of vague demands issuing up out of the dark of himself: food, sleep, sex. It’s all he had.

At times like this when two people he liked very much did not like each other, Noah wondered what to make of the pernicious nature of loyalty.

jacaranda.

In Iowa ?!?

eating the popsicle that they had not paid for.

You said earlier they bought it!!!!

Jealousy was so pointless. No one ever belonged to anyone. Not really.