Knocking At The Gate

My first magazine subscription when I was a kid was for Mad magazine, followed in short order by National Lampoon . It was in National Lampoon that I first read writing that both made me laugh out loud and but was also so stylish that I wanted to learn how to write myself. Those hilariously raunchy, absurd, and punchy articles and stories were written by this man. One of the only times I ever got in trouble at school was when I smuggled in a National Lampoon magazine, which I then loaned to a friend, who then busted out laughing when he read the O'Rourke article I had pointed out to him. We both got reprimanded but we both agreed it was worth it. That stuff was funny as hell.  O'Rourke then went on to appear in nearly every other funny or politically-charged or literary or hip magazine that a voracious young reader like me was able to find in my rural Florida hometown. No matter which magazine I picked up next, he seemed to be in it: The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fai...

I didn’t know where I was going until I found my brother Frank under a big spiraea bush. Frank was twelve then, and I wasn’t surprised to find him under there. He spent a lot of time under there on hot days. Just like a dog, he’d make a hollow in the cool earth all around the roots. And you never could tell what Frank would have under the bush with him. One time he had a dirty book. Another time he had a bottle of cooking sherry. On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight. The bug fight was so interesting that I stopped crying right away — forgot all about the old man. I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s wha...

In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred    and sixty-seven words, per day. Full poem here. Jeffrey McDaniel. (1998). “The Quiet World” from The Forgiveness Parade . San Francisco: Manic D Press.