Contemporary Literature Paean

Come forth, modernism.

Come forth, realism, gritty and realism, magical.

Come forth, art imitating life.

I have wrought altars in monolithic tribute to you.

I have written a short story where a man of no importance eats breakfast,

goes to work, types up a memo, takes a lunch break, is bored in a meeting,

goes home, watches television, has a bowel movement, then hangs himself

with a silken rope for no adequately explored reason.

I composed a story about a salesman and a dragon moving through New

York, where nobody points at it and says “holy crap, a dragon!” because

really, it is the dragon within all of us.

I crafted a novel with enough skill to draw readers in and make them drop

their guards, and then hit them with an emotional sucker punch and let them

know that naive cretins they are.

I transcribed a poem concluding that continuing to live and committing suicide

are equally futile.

I wrote a story about a woman intimately concerned with a bake sale. It goes

on in stream-of-consciousness style, with vivid detail, considering how close

the bake sale is to reaching its goal, how well the marshmallow-cereal treats

are selling compared with the peanut brownies, and every other trifling aspect

of the event, for two hundred pages.