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Who the Fuck is “we” James A. Michener?

“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you”

James A. Michener.

Yes, that’s true, and also:

If you can’t be white milk, please don’t be milk at all.

No, wait.

If you can’t be mayonnaise, uh, be a saltine…Wait, if you can’t be sexually OK and also maybe wear a proper vest/socks arrangement and speak quietly with utmost appropriateness of shoe color and sensible automobile and please remove your shoes before I think OK maybe meet you at the lawn care symposium? Something.

The other Tuesday I was driving home and grooving to this song on the radio, have no idea who but whatever, and it’s juicing me, flowing my skin/nerves/belly, and I’m doing the arm fist-bump-to-fist bump dance from the ‘50s with one hand and doing the hand-caterpillar from the ‘80s with the other (guiding by baby-baby Subaru with my knees) and I’m just grooving life, caught in a moment, just living it zone free floating serotonin shivers…just flowing, just flowing, one of those thangs.

And it wasn’t Mozart or The Beatles, Mr. A. Michener. It was just a good pop song.

Word.

LeoTolstoy

How would you children like me to take you for lunch at the Cracker Barrel? Huh?

  • John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024) and Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press, forthcoming in 2026).  His  fiction is also published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, Hobart, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His poetry is also published in elimae, Sixth Finch, Contrapuntos, and elsewhere. His criticism is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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