Not James Joyce Rustin Larson

“...the University of Iowa fired Berryman for screaming drunken obscenities and defecating on his landlord’s porch...”

--Gene Lyons, Entertainment

Eye patch strapped over the left eye, eyeglasses over the patch, hand to chin, ale on the table, a moody lamplight, a slice of bread, a ration, an allotment, some red wine for the liver, a presnitz, a fig roll, a creature comfort, some salt on a boiled egg, a newspaper in Italian, the house a steep climb, nothing, Trieste, a marina, houseboats and other small craft in the hot sun. Joy is a dandelion. Fuck. I’m just kidding. This is all salt and bollox. It’s your local grumpy librarian here, ale, and a bowl of peanuts. I’m not James Joyce. I’m liver cooked and chopped and lightly regarded, good on bread for a quick read if you don’t want to think. Black bread on my table tonight, cauliflower soup, the house all aquiver with solitude. For the love of God and liver, read your books, type at your keyboard, but for joy’s sake, leave me alone. Iowa City, not Trieste, ale ala John’s Grocery, everybody’s puffed upon the salt of ego. Bah. I’m just a grump. Maybe I should salt the ice on the front stoop, maybe feed some bread to the pigeons. I get sick of myself, this house, the bridges, the sunset, the churning ale of the spillway. Who is my opponent? His liver I curse, oh lord; be not mine enemy. Know joy.

Amen. Selah. I feel so much anger, no joy, having been wronged. Oh, this is not the salt of poetry, but a black painting on the liverblack canvas of February. Tonight is the opening of “Eat You Alive,” a show of nine paintings by a farmer boy who ran away to Los Angeles. All the cute art girls will be happy to see him and sip cocktails, joy, and laugh and nibble cheese puffs. A table of ale and other snacks await the witty quips and salty observations of the senior art faculty. Like bread, toasted, the paintings charm the sick liver