Deceitful enticements.


Reading old magazines
with rubber gloves and a
dust mask on my face
I feel like a postal worker at
Rockefeller Center after the
anthrax attacks on
Tom Brokaw.

So much text,
inch after inch of
cackling effluvia,
formatted for distraction and
knowing physical comedy,
a taut anecdote
(scooped from a
300-page memoir)
stuffed in the
corner of a 3,000-word
profile of the
forgotten dilettante who
fooled his peers with the
genius schtick.

The un-verified anecdote
supports the wordful mass
like a crutch,
that little slip of words
holds the magazine together
so the porous future can
question and disprove the
editorial chicanery that
held a generation by its
gossamer-thick attention.