In the Tabloid City
by Thomas Wooten

Description

At the border between the lyrical and prosaic, Thomas Wooten appears. He describes a city both fantastic and real, both magical and ordinary. And then there is his attention to detail, the craft with which his sentences are constructed. He spins a tale, as the old ones did, turning filament into sails.

Excerpt:

What did we think we were doing? Frankly, we didn’t know nor did we care. I got up before everyone else and went down to the ocean. There you are, I said, and plunged right in. There were some fleecy clouds, I think they call them in books. I tell you, it didn’t matter. I swam a ways out and felt something change. You know, the way it does in an elevator that’s about to get stuck. Or maybe I’m thinking about that book again. Love’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but then what comes in second’s pretty far back. That could be construed as a lesson, if you were of such a mind. But you’d have to be kind of loony. I don’t remember who said that, but someone did. Probably trying to warn us about the next thing. So we all laughed. And then someone else said the thing about Labrador. That carried us through the rest of the day.