What’s What


All I want is what everyone else seems to want, more of everything. There’s no immunity from it and no long-term cure for it. There are just these abrupt yearnings that ache in accordance with the tradition of pointless human suffering. My 6-year-old grandson looks up from hours of playing Minecraft on his iPad, dark circles under his eyes. “What’s s-u-n-n-y spell?” he asks. The principal product of America is an idealized image of America. Only the other day I stepped on the shadow of an old black woman who was creeping along the sidewalk, bent nearly in half over her cane. Police have a suspect in custody.