It’s no longer clear whether the cure is worse than the disease and so people can’t be either sick or well. Standing in a doorway won’t do much good but at least the breeze slides lightly along my arms. Here comes my cute little censor. Visitors drive into town just to bark up trees and don’t ask me which ones are wrong.
It’s common these days to chase people out of districts while shouting, “You have no right to exist.” Or think you’ll see better when the sun is gone, perhaps bought by someone who believes in redesigning it. Very well then. I’ll just be here spilling blueberries and water.
Only those whose lives have meaning can know what it is to want to escape meaning and of course that’s everyone.
Quickly! Create more generals and throw them into the breach.
I guess if someone in this situation has to have a gun it’s better that they’re somewhere else entirely. What new values are you suggesting?
It’s just like me to let other people talking suck the ideas right out of my eyes. Shouting “I don’t believe in mailboxes!” made no one feel better.
If you can’t loosen the tightness, maybe keep tightening until the nail breaks right through the wood.
Don’t mind me. I woke up this morning with several less layers of skin and the sense that I could replace triceratops if someone would lend me a shield of bone.


Mark Wallace lives in San Diego, where since 2005 he has been working on a multi-part long poem exploring the psychogeography of southern California, The End of America, sections of which have been published in a number of journals and books and chapbooks, most recently The End of America 8 (Glovebox Books, 2023). He is the author of many other books of poetry, including Notes from the Center on Public Policy (2014) and Felonies of Illusion (2008), as well as several books of fiction, including the novels Crab (2017) and The Quarry and the Lot (2011).