Culture Wars / “Alexa,” I said “What’s the News?

Culture Wars

The landlord was on the phone demanding the rent. There were some crumpled bills and a couple of bucks in change on top of the dresser, enough for cigarettes and scratch-offs, maybe a bottle of Italian Red. I quoted the Psalms to him: “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself. . .” The sunset faded as we argued back and forth.  An almost purple black settled over the city. I brought a full container of gasoline with me next time I went out. A passerby who caught a glimpse muttered, “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”  Roots twisted and bulged beneath the asphalt.

‘Alexa,’ I Said, ‘What’s the News?’

Workmen have bricked up the windows and doors of houses belonging to the government’s worst critics. The pilot of the airliner that went down had been slurping Chivas Regal straight from the bottle for hours. There are colors in nature that birds can see and humans can’t. A former prodigy, in commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima, played a burning piano on a beach. And though the smoke choked him, and the scorching heat of the fire melted his eyeballs and peeled the skin off his hands, he just kept playing until the piano stopped being able to produce sounds.