John Stoss
From Nobody Loves Me Ed note: Poet, novelist, painter, playwrighte, singer-songwriter and general genial genius John Stoss has just published a volume of collected poems—500 pages beginning with older work (most of it gathered in a 1977 Lost Roads volume called Finding the Broom) and including a 200 page narrative autobiographical poem. We are privileged to present a few brief excerpts from early in the poem. Stoss was born and raised on a Kansas farm, and that is the landscape for these excerpts from the poem, which, like the book itself, bears the title Nobody Loves Me.
Nobody loves me that’s what I’ve learned in all these years since I was born It’s not that I feel sorry for myself it’s just that I moved to California 25 years ago It was a great mistake I should have been leaving it when I arrived Everything bad about California you’ve heard is true everything good you’ve heard is true I never adjusted all my life I thought eventually whatever was needed to help me find my way would happen that’s what they always say as I wandered around first Kansas then Arkansas then Louisiana
71
