The
Journal of Cell Death
one imagines, would be unlikely to turn up
draped across a glossy copy of Barns of New England
on someone’s blond wood coffee table in a fussy
fan of recent Architectural
Digest’s and Town and Country.
Rather, it strikes me as a publication given
to lurking about on the metal desk of the warden
or laying naked on a porcelain slab down
at the morgue, the medical examiner poking through
the somber pages at lunch, carelessly smearing
grape jelly on the funereal cover. The
Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly
Report will be there to keep it company, just
the two of them talking deep into the night, long,
rambling
existential bull sessions that could put the dead to
sleep.
I wonder how many of them passed reading Colonial Waterbirds?
A final exhalation, then a peaceful paddle over to the
other side.
This beats, hands down, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
whose deceased readership is forever doomed to walk
the earth in search of their souls. How tempting it would be
to ride the subway behind a copy of the Hoodoo and Conjure
Quarterly,
keeping tabs on your fellow commuters through two
perfectly round peep holes. Probably not as much fun as reading
the latest issue of Fire!!
in a crowded movie theater or BOMB
on an overnight flight to Amsterdam. Next time you visit
your doctor, pass on the well-thumbed Time, skip the sticky
Highlights. Ask the nurse for Contagion: Journal of
Violence,
Mimesis
and Culture, but be discreet. My internist is running
late this morning, but I’m perfectly content to flip through
back issues of Bird
Banding and The Florida Buggist.
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