Stephen Shoup often pretends to know his part in the narrative. A series of loosely-based philosophical concerns and minor spiritual convictions dominate his uniquely distorted world view. Periods of creative outbursts are interrupted by his academic pursuits, which he realizes often only dilute the content of his work, but somehow vindicate his concern with being recognized as able to write within formal paradigms. This carbon-based life form is busy weaving together a patchwork of minor successes to shield his relatively fragile persona from the gnawing suspicion that massive failure is imminent. The inability of language to describe the true essence of the human experience is evident in talking with him; his sentences often trail off into inaudible mumbles, which in an attempt to later finish, he constructs poems.
Dollar bills to the acne-faced clerk
this is what he works for
Roughly four hundred and forty two each
day
Sometimes he stops writing his staff
reports
to calculate
how many of these four
hundred and forty two dollars
he has earned since 8 am
He does this on his desktop computer
calculator
Damn, does it feel good
seconds becoming currency
Some aunt on his mother’s side said more
than once that money was the root of all
evil. She was a poor woman with no
education and a matchbook home in
Missouri, windchimes and a yard
perpetually unmowed. People would say
life’s been hard on her. But he knows
better. If only she’d tried harder, or
read the Wall Street Journal at least on
weekends.
He knows how to invest his dollar bills.
A wife in a house who is the warm place
his extremities crave, and craving is a
bull market.
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