Archive for August 2020
Through a glass, darkly
by David Benjamin “All this time I watched my woman/ Drownin’ in a pool of tears,/ And I’ve seen a lot of good folks die/ That had a lot of bills to pay…” — “Take This Job and Shove It” (lyrics, David Allan Coe) MADISON, Wis. — For at least 1,500 days I’ve been trying…
Read MoreNeither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of soul…
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — As I consider a Postal Service targeted for vivisection by a paranoid narcissist and run by a fatcat hitman with a dirty scalpel, I scroll through my lifelong romance — with stamps and parcel post, love letters and amiable, unflappable mailcarriers. My first mailman was twenty minutes late every…
Read MoreElection Day! New! Improved! (Members only)
by David Benjamin OVAL OFFICE — (A group of aides around POTUS, all quaking in their wingtips. The papers they hold in their trembling hands make a gentle rustling sound, like dead leaves in a wasteland.) AIDE #1: “Your Eminence, there’s bad news.” POTUS: “Bad news? I hate bad news. Who the hell are you?…
Read MoreA walk through Hell
by David Benjamin My mother-in-law is hibakusha, an A-bomb survivor. On the morning of August 6, 1945, she took the last train out of the center of Hiroshima, an area known forever after as Ground Zero. She was a schoolgirl required to work in a munitions plant on the edge of the city. It was…
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