Marion Douglass had the black thick rimmed glasses most adored by MFA students everywhere. This pleased the crowd at The Lit Snob. Marion Douglass look as they felt an author should look, acted as an author should act (well spoken but modest about her accomplishments, taking careful sips of a mocha-coffee related beverage), and was quite the "young talent" according to Todd via the all powerful New York Time Book Review.
She carefully annunciated a prose poem, "Factory" from her new book.
...
Make out a city quiet and deserted, stored with closed signs in the windows hanging from stretchy elastic strings that used to be white, homes with shades down over drafty old windows. Zoom in on a derelict factory in the part of town people don’t like to talk about, the part of town with supposed drug deals and girls in too tight skirts that are going to not make it because of fetuses and needles in veins, pushing in who knows what, hopefully not air. So, this derelict factory: chimney still standing, but just barely, standing obstinately against a dark night, dark without the pinprick on stars. White juxtaposed oh so harshly on black. The roof, not so lucky because it is caving in at parts, shingle by shingle crashing down into earth, dust to dust, returning to that Almighty Creator. (Did He forget?) Windows, where they were are mouths open to the night air that pours in and out, a rushing wind, crashing through the interior of the factory, propelling the dirt from the shoes of some worker from those better times, propelling the brown leaves that have become the sole denizens of this brick kingdom. In an unholy place, but why? A gate to Hell because Hell is all around us, here in the real world when Gillian from down the street gives it all up at thirteen and pops out a bastard child nine months later all alone. Mom kicked her out. All these little tragedies, and not lovely like in Shakespeare. The factory all alone, thrusting into the ebony sky, a triumph that here in Hell there are still small triumphs.
...
The crowd was pleased. Ah, how new. Ah, now fresh. Mrs. Darson daintily sipped her over priced beverage with happiness at both the drink and the young woman in front of her. Todd's interruption of thanks was jarring. His announcement about next weeks writer a local man apparently trying to get his book published and hoping this would be it was also unwelcome.
"And I am sure we will all be eager to hear what soon-to-be-published writer, David Cambera has to share with us. Next week then. Same place, same time." Todd lightly chortled. Mrs. Darson attempted to finish her beverage before having to go to her old and cup-holder-less car.
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