So If Hunger Provokes Wailing And Wailing

When Reviewers Take The Trouble To Compliment A Writer On Her Style, It Is Usually Because She Has Made It Easy For Them To Slide From One Sentence To Another Like An Otter Down A Slope.

But The Body Fails Us And The Mirror Knows, And We No Longer Insist That The Gray Hush Be Carried Off Its Surface By The Cloth, For We Have Run To Fat, And Wrinkles Encircle The Eyes And Notch The Neck Where The Skin Wattles, And The Flesh Of The Arms Hangs Loose Like An Overlarge Sleeve, Veins Thicken Like Ropes And Empurple The Body As Though They Had Been Drawn There By A Pen, Freckles Darken, Liver Spots Appear, The Hairah, The Hair Is Exhausted And Gray And Lusterless, In Weary Rolls Like Cornered Lint.

Getting Even Is One Reason For Writing.

The Word Itself Has Another Color. It’s Not A Word With Any Resonance, Although The E Was Once Pronounced. There Is Only The Bump Now Between B And L, The Relief At The End, The Whew. It Hasn’t The Sly Turn Which Crimson Takes Halfway Through, Yellow’s Deceptive Jelly, Or The Rolled-down Sound In Brown. It Hasn’t Violet’s Rapid Sexual Shudder Or Like A Rough Road The Irregularity Of Ultramarine, The Low Puddle In Mauve Like A Pancake Covered In Cream, The Disapproving Purse To Pink, The Assertive Brevity Of Red, The Whine Of Green.

We Have Scarcely Gotten Home ... When Our Children's Sneezes Greet Us, Skinned Knees Bleed After Waiting All Day To Do So. There Is The Bellyache And The Burned-out Basement Bulb, The Stalled Car And The Incontinent Cat. The Windows Frost, The Toilets Sweat, The Body Of Our Spouse Is One Cold Shoulder And The Darkness Of Our Bedroom Is Soon Full Of The Fallen Shadows Of Our Failures.