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The Spoon River Metblog




         A group blog adaptation of
“Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters


          Written by Jay Bushman


    Produced by The Loose-Fish Project:
      Adapting classic texts to the web


        Originally published in 2008
      http://spoonriver.metblogs.com
The Source: Spoon River Anthology



When they first appeared serially in the magazine Reedy’s Mirror in 1915, the 244 poems
that make up Spoon River Anthology were a scandal and a sensation. A poet named
Webster Ford, visiting the cemetery in his fictional hometown of Spoon
River, Illinois, hears the testimony of the local dead. Each individual poem is one
person’s epitaph. Some of them have attained wisdom in their passing. Some cling to
the grudges of their living days. Some cry for justice. Some ask for forgiveness. Many
relate their part in the culture war between liberals and conservatives that split their
town in two. Most, but not all, are unquiet. Each individual testimony reveals more
detail about the larger stories occurring in the town, with people augmenting or
contradicting their neighbors.


Masters used plain and blunt language to describe their inner, secret lives, touching on
topics such as abortion, murder, infidelity and atheism, and ripping the veneer off the
image of idyllic small town life. When the poems were assembled, augmented and
reordered in book form in 1916, it became the second best-selling volume of American
poetry of all-time.


Today it is a standard text in many high school English classes and acting schools, and
stage adaptations are regularly performed.
244 Voices From The Grave



“The Spoon River Metblog” updates this complex narrative while returning to the
original serial form of distribution. In this version, the town is a different Spoon River, a
microcosm of a shrinking America. Here too, a culture war raged, secrets were
kept, people loved and betrayed and murdered. We hear 244 of the departed bear
witness to the meaning, or lack of meaning, of their lives. Our guide here is not a poet;
instead, a writer named George Dillon Davidson records the epitaphs of the dead in a
kind of syllabic prose.


The story is told in the form of a Metblog. Metrobloggingis a worldwide network of city-
specific blogs, where groups of authors write stories about life in their city from a
personal, hyper-local perspective. Bode Media, the publishers of Metroblogging, built a
fictional Metblog site for Spoon River at http://spoonriver.metblogs.com. The epitaphs
as relayed by Davidson are published as individual blog posts.


And there is a hidden code which leads the reader to uncover even more of the town’s
secrets…




                                                       Meet the people of Spoon River
1. I, Metadata



The                                       might remain to tell your stories
holographic memory stores                 or
en-                                       damn your enemies. To confess
                                          un-
ciphered throughout our brains; our We,   love of your family or warn
our                                       of
Us, our I; the thing we whisper
night-                                    those fatal mistakes. To pronounce
time pleas and stories to. The hub        wise
                                          edicts and foolish rules. And some
of                                        nights,
feeling and of knowing and of             there’d be me there, listening for
                                          you.
self.
You could have (sort of) eternal          Spoon River’s legacy is here,
life,                                     in
let it be imaged in software              xerox-constructed epitaphs
and
built into your grave site. You’d be      by George Dillon Davidson
long
expired, but your encoded
Soul
                                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/i-metadata
2. Lukasz Harding



I’m buried right next to
Jim Waring, the stockbroker.          later they gave me a
I remember he made                    lethal injection. Now I
a mint in the dot com boom,           lie next to Jim. Seems our
went bankrupt, and somehow            two roads led to the same place.
ended up even richer
than before, while I lost
everything I had and more.

Seeing how the wealthy
just took what they felt they could
get away with, I went
and robbed a mini-mart store
and accidentally
shot the clerk at the counter.
He was an immigrant,
a father of four and I
killed him. I plead guilty
and got death row, where five years

                                      http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/lukasz-harding
3. Marion Rankin-Dyer



My husband was a cruel
man. He never laid a
finger on me,
but there was no love in
his eyes no matter what
he said. I knew.

Years went by quietly.
He wore me down, and my
spirit smothered
until the face in my
mirror looked at me with
the same contempt.

I withered and died. But
I am content, because
now it haunts him,
that awful face. He knows
what he did to me. That
is my revenge.
                            http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/marion-rankin-dyer
4. Nathan Rankin-Dyer



She’s always there, watching
me. Before, beautiful
and young, later
drained, accusatory.
Now, from behind my own
eyes. What did I
do to deserve this end?
Who am I fooling? I
know what I did.




                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/nathan-rankin-dyer
5. Ira Hernandez



I spent years
in the garage, trying to make my
vision real.
Dreaming of the systems, the software,
the networks,
code I could recite like poetry.
Then one day,
it all came together as I planned
and I saw
myself standing in the company
of all the
famous garage geniuses, and in
excitement
I tripped over a power cord and
dashed my brains
all over the floor of the garage.

I thought work
was supposed to be its own reward.

                                     http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/ira-hernandez
6. Evan Loy



They called me good.
No one knew.
They called me nice.
No one knew.
They called me a
gentleman,
always with a
kind word or
gesture. So they
never knew,
the fools. And they
never will.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/evan-loy
7. Fat Tina



Ugly me,
I never had
anyone
who saw what I
could feel on
the inside. They
just pointed
and gave me a
name that I
would never lose.

They say that
all people are
beautiful
in some way but
nobody
ever found mine.



                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/fat-tina
8. Suze Mueller



I got pregnant                    But he knows, and I know that
my second year of college         he killed me as
and Michael said                  sure as if he’d cut my throat.
we should have the baby. And
when I told him
about the sad history
of the women
in my family, that I
was terrified,
he would not listen to me.
I relented,
carried to term and died while
giving birth to
a baby girl. And now he
raises her and
they all say how he’s selfless,
honorable,
and that the whole story is
a tragedy

                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/suze-mueller
9. Tammy Wilkes



I lost my sister
to drugs, and took in her
two daughters to raise.
Mya and Janice grew
to hate me, but I
don’t blame them and neither
should you. I was too
hard on them, thinking that
discipline would save
them from their mother’s fate.
But all I did was
drive them back to the street.

I was supposed to
keep them safe but I failed.
May God forgive me.
I swear I tried my best.



                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/tammy-wilkes
10. Mike Ely



I was shot dead            that the deal
for the five               was illegal
bucks of crack I’d         somehow. It
just bought. They          was a giant
buried me, an              scandal and
indigent,                  they were forced to
in Potter’s Field.         pay to move
That was fine.             all the corpses
It was just what           to new graves
I had earned.
                           Which is how I
But then they sold         ended up
the graveyard              here, in the same
to a bigshot               ground where they
real estate                put that banker
developer                  and his wife,
to build a                 you know, the ones
big shopping mall.         that always
It came out                were on TV.
in the papers
                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/mike-ely
11. Judge AbnerGoldhamer



It’s just not fair, is
it? A respected
Judge, pillar of the community,
friend to all the right
people, a man who
spent his lifetime upholding the law,
seeing wrong punished,
virtue rewarded.

So why am I buried here with no
marker of all my
great accomplishments
while that drug addict Michael Ely
gets a headstone of
Italian marble?

There is no justice in Spoon River.



                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/judge-abner-goldhamer
12. Eleanor Stargall



Do you remember when the            kids off to die, but you were
Republicans paid Mike Ely           too busy waving flags to hear.
to gather up street people          My gift to you Spoon River.
and go around town disrupting
Democratic polling sites            Have your fucking war. Choke on
as a part of their dirty tricks       it.
campaign to buy another
term for our Mayor Garrity?

What you won’t remember is
when I packed it in after years
fighting them on behalf of
a “public interest” most of the
public had no interest in
protecting. So I took the bribe
they offered me and shut up
while they elected that moron
Robin Parker to Congress.
I could have warned you he’d send
   our
                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/eleanor-stargall
13. Kyle Kerns



Give this message              dear Mayor Judy
to our esteemed town           Garrity, the
leaders who have               avatar of our
survived me. Titans            morality.
of Spoon River:                The righteous ones whom
Christian Deegan, and          I spent my life
his gross fortune,             opposing in and
corrupting all that            out of court and
it touched. The right          who have all outlived
Reverend Sheaffer              me. Tell them not
preaching decades              to worry. I got
worth of bile with             here first, and I’m
impunity.                      building a brand new
Don Howard, with his           Circle of Hell
television                     just for them. Tell them
station pumping lies           I’m waiting and
and circuses                   I will see them soon.
around the clock. And
don’t forget our

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/kyle-kerns
14. Benjamin Ridley



I was a happy kid who grew
to be a happy man,
a lawyer, a community
voice, I was friends with men
and women of all persuasions.
And then I met her. We
were married, and things changed. My friends
said she made me ashamed,
timid, and my standing became
diminished. We argued
for years, decades. She always won.
By the time I left, I
had nowhere to go, nobody
who would give me refuge.
So I lived out my days sleeping
on the short couch in my
tiny office. At least I could
Smoke there without hearing
Her tell me what I was doing
Wrong. At least I had that.
                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/benjamin-ridley
15. Tysha Ridley-Sampson



I fell in love with
him because of how his
smoky breath excited me.
But when I had to
live with it every day,
a constant reminder of
how his values were
opposed to mine, I could
not forget it. I could not
let it go. That scent
never lost its power,
even after I drove him
away. How can love
and disgust be able
to live together in peace?




                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/tysha-ridley-sampson
16. Micah Ridley



It took me years to            years after I thought
see that all I became          of it as a silly
was made possible              juvenile crush. It
because of Miss Travis.        was twenty years before
I was headed to                I saw that I was
jail or worse. I was bent      measuring all of my
on destroying my               lovers against the
self, since destruction was    template of you. I wish
all I had learned to           I could have told you,
do. But Miss Travis was        consequences be damned.
the only one in
all of godforsaken
Spoon River who gave
me reason to believe
I had a future.

Miss Travis, I never
told you how much I
was in love with you. For

                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/micah-ridley
17. Genevieve Travis



I taught hundreds of students, thousands.
I only ever loved
one, dear Micah. I was so proud when
you escaped this town and
made a life for yourself in the world.
Even if I dreamed you
might come back someday and pined for it,
I’m glad you never did.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/genevieve-travis
18. Santiago Rufino, Pharm.D.



You have to know which drugs can be
taken with what other
drugs and which can’t, if you
want to own a pharmacy like
I did. Too bad there’s no
equivalent science
for mixing personalities.
Two people who are whole
on their own can form less
than the sum of their parts when mixed.
The Ridley-Sampsons there
are a good example.
Fine as individuals but
disastrous when blended
and resulting in a
toxic reaction like their son.
Even an expert can
be surprised sometimes, like
when my wife poisoned me to death
with chemicals that she
pilfered from my own store.
                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/santiago-rufino-pharmd
19. Daisey Kane



For a while there I was          was paid for with
public menace                    money that came from “fees”
number one. The symbol           and “taxes” and
of all that was                  “punitive judgments” on
wrong in Spoon River. Just       what they called vice.
get rid of me                    How much money from my
and all would be perfect         pocket paid for
and pure. Except                 the schools, the streets, the cops,
how much of Don Howard’s         the services
kickbacks found their            that made Spoon River run?
way to the town coffers?         Do you wonder
Or the windfall                  why they never shut me
in stock Judge Fairlawn cashed   down completely?
in after he                      If they had tried, the town
ruled in the favor of            would have fallen
Deegan Partners?                 apart, along with their
And didn’t Reverend              moral veneer.
Sheaffer live in
a mansion while most of
his flock was poor?
                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/daisey-kane
And how much of the town
20. Benjamin Ridley Kane



I could always see all
the people behind the
people, the ghosts
trailing mutely behind
them, unable to give
warnings or laugh
at mistakes. Nobody
else could, but me. And I
would try speaking
to them, to decipher




                            http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/benjamin-ridley-kane
21. Efa Underwood


I wrote my                                     many injustices that came next.
little stories, and folks rolled their eyes.   I had no
“Who’s ever                                    family to support me, mother
gonna read these?” “Nothing happens.” “I       long vanished,
don’t get it.”                                 father too mired in old ways to
I was keener on divining things                even speak
unspoken                                       about it, and no money for an
between people who are all alone,              abortion
than simple                                    I begged Doctor Golden for help. He
turning of a story’s mechanics.                delivered
                                               me into the world, and I pleaded
The best place                                 with him to
to observe the animals at play                 deliver me again. He agreed
was always                                     to help me.
the bar at the Butcher’s Block. But there      But something went wrong and I didn’t
are cruel beasts                               recover.
out there, who only hear what they say         It took eight horrible weeks for me
to themselves.                                 to fade and
That’s how I was pinned by the claws of        die, while Doctor Golden was dragged through
Dutch Wallis,                                  the mud and
who trapped me in the alley behind             held responsible. Him, not Wallis.
Butcher’s, and
savaged me. He broke my bones, knocked out     Seems it was
my teeth, raked                                true. No one understood my stories.
my skin, spilled my blood and left me a
pregnancy.

That he got away with it was just
the first of

                                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/efa-underwood
22. Llewelyn Underwood



There were Underwoods in this part
of the country when it was still a
colony. But instead of the
legacy of the founders of this
town, all you saw was a sad, poor
laborer carting a case home from
the Cut-Rate. And then my bitch wife
ran off. And then what you all did to
my poor Efa. I was the last
of the Underwoods. There are no more.




                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/llewelyn-underwood
23. Dutch Wallis



I was finally               But because I was                     took it. It wasn’t
able to sober up.           smoking where I shouldn’t             nearly enough to pay
                            have been, workers comp               for my expenses,
And I got a job             denied my claim, and I                and ran out quickly but
working as a third-shift    was forced to sue the                 I solved that with a
janitor at the              owner of the mall. Which              return to my drinking.
big new Galleria.           turned out to be a
One Monday morning,         company owned by Rod
I was working in the        Deegan. Which meant that
basement and stopped for    the expired permits
a smoke break. When I lit   and failed inspections
the match, there was a      were covered up. The Judge
giant explosion. I          in the case, like all
got second and third        of them, a friend of the
degree burns all over.      Deegans, allowed the
                            case to be delayed so
It turned out there were    long that there was no
methane leaks all over      way I could afford all
the building, and it        the medical bills
was a miracle that          and legal fees. So when
it hadn’t burned while      they offered me a
full of people shopping.    tiny settlement, I
                                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/dutch-wallis
24. Doctor Robert Golden



A lifetime of service,           the stroke killed her. I
helping and healing              followed her soon after,
families, meant nothing          never convicted of
when I could not save poor       any crime, never
Efa Underwood.                   found innocent either.
My name and picture on
every newspaper
cover, every
television screen. Charged
with manslaughter. And the
protestors! I went
to medical school with
a good friend of that
Doctor Sleppian,
so how could I take the
threats idly? I could see
vengeful killers in
every crowd. The strain
weighed on my wife, until

                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/doctor-robert-golden
25. Mrs. Inez Golden



He spent the
remainder of
my life and his railing
against his
public disgrace.
He thinks the strain killed me.

I couldn’t
tell him the truth.
I thought he was guilty.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/doctor-robert-golden
26. Kevin Winterbaum



It was somewhere near
Basra, I think, where I died. Bleeding
into the sand, all
I could think about was how none of
my troublemaking
was worth it, and when they gave me the
choice of jail or the
Marines, I chose wrong. They gave me a
hero’s burial
and everyone was so proud of me.




                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/kevin-winterbaum
27. Sheila Springer



Kevin Winterbaum
was arrested for having drugs,
for vandalism
and mischief, and Judge Bolton let
him join the army
to pay off his debt. But he died.
And nobody knew
that the only reason Kevin
was getting high and
smashing mailboxes that night, was
because he caught me
with Gio Moss, and I screamed at
him that I never
wanted to see his face again.

After he died I
saw it every night of my life.



                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/sheila-springer
28. Eugene Conkin



My family owned the             I kept their organic
orchard. My father taught       crusade at bay until
me how to run it, and           I passed on. Then they made
do whatever it took             their changes anyway.
to maximize yield, to
preserve freshness, and to      But maybe they were right.
amplify color. I                I’ve been buried here for
gave my children stakes in      years; the worms won’t touch
the business, and we fought        me.
over the additives
and fertilizers, the
chemical sprays and the
preservatives. They had
this strange idea about
how people wanted less
colorful and shorter-
lasting apples, and that
they would pay more for them.


                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/eugene-conkin
29. Jamieson Hazeltone



All I ever did was study
for the tests at school. I always passed,
always got A’s, but it wasn’t
enough. The tests were weighted and it
was possible to get a grade
that was over one-hundred percent.
So a perfect score was still not
good enough, and they drilled it into
us that our performance on the
exams would determine the rest of
our lives. In one way they were right.
I was so frightened of not being
good enough, all I did was work.
And when the panic attacks started,
I didn’t tell anybody
because it would mean I’d have less time
to study. The day that I was
supposed to take the PSATs,
I had an attack while walking
to school, and fell in front of the bus.

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/jamieson-hazeltone
30. Al Hazeltone



When I
was growing up, Spoon River was much
smaller.
My high school class was less than eighty,
and I
think most of us stayed here in the town.
Unlike
the later generations, who left
as soon
as they could. How many of my old
school chums
are here with me now? Life can be long.




                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/al-hazeltone
31. Doctor Jason Centrone



Long after house calls had        funeral and they
become a relic,                   cried in memory
I was known throughout the town   of my infinite kindness
as the one who could be           and patience. But when I
called on at any                  saw my Cassandra
hour of the night. And the        hiding at the edge of the
people loved me for it.           crowd of mourners, afraid
But the truth was my              to show in public
wife was a harpy, my kids         what we hid for so many
were strangers, and my work       years, all I could do then
was the only thing                was hate myself for
that kept me from jumping from    being a lying coward.
the Deegan Bridge. Any
excuse to get out
of the house, I would take it.

So, when I finally
passed, the entire
community came to my

                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/doctor-jason-centrone
32. Officer Copeland



We rotated with other
squads, but I always loved the night
shift. Sure, during the summer,
when it was too hot to stay calm,
it meant that there was a lot
more crap to deal with. Shootings and
stabbings almost every night.
And of course drugs, always the drugs.

But in the wintertime, most
people would stay inside trying
to keep warm. It was just too
damn cold to make any trouble
And it would be so quiet.
Sometimes I would get out of my
patrol car and walk the streets,
like a beat cop of the old days.

Every night is that quiet
now. I could not be happier.
                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/officer-copeland
33. Hannah Ward



Jimmy, it’s so clear to
me now. Please don’t
mourn for me anymore.
My husband knew
all about us, and he
suffered as much
agony as we did
in trying to
keep it secret from him.
But give him this
message from me. Tell him
my love for you
did not diminish my
love for him. Love
is not finite. The more
it is shared, the
more it creates. Go and
love him for me.


                            http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/hannah-ward
34. Paul Robeson Law



My father was                   Instead, I enjoyed my life.
always going on and on          So maybe
about how                       I was too drunk
I needed to                     to drive and killed myself by
be responsible to the           smashing head-
family,                         on into that
to our people,                  tree. But hey, at least I did
to make something of myself.    it myself.
My life, it
never belonged
to me, it was always the
property
of someone else.
I couldn’t go along with
that. So I
didn’t become
a lawyer, a judge or a
respected
entrepreneur.

                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/paul-robeson-law
35. Shelly Leithouse



As a kid, all that I                   and joy and life to this dreary town.
listened to was classic rock. But
    when                               But the powers that be
I went to the U.K.                     finally forced me to close down my
for a study abroad year, I was         Cathedral. Soon after
exposed to so many                     I got sick, and to their glee I did
different new sounds. And then my      not recover. I don’t
    friends dragged                    know why I could never escape them.
me to the festival                     And now I will lie here
at Glastonbury, and I spent twelve     forever where there is no music.
blissful hours in the
Experimental Sound Field. I walked
away a changed person.

I came back to Spoon River with my
DJ boyfriend and tried
to open a club. He took off soon
thereafter, but I did
not give up. I spent the next decade
trying to bring music
                                       http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/shelly-leithouse
36. Christine Siegel



I picked the fight with him that morning
over nothing at all.
He married me, even though I was
pregnant with another
man’s baby. I was scared that he was
regretting it. He left
for work, slamming doors behind him. I
raided the medicine
cabinet. I lay down in bed to
read, but never got up.




                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/christine-siegel
37. Miguel Elliott



I never listened to
public service announcements
that warned against riding
in-between train cars. Then I
lost my grip, and became
the warning. I’m sorry, Mom.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/miguel-elliott
38. Scott DeMayo



My folks would rarely
let me out of the house.
They were scared I would
get caught up in the gangs
that ran around our
neighborhood. So I stayed
in and was lonely.
And none of it mattered
when that stray bullet
shattered through my bedroom
window. I wish they
would have let me out more.




                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/scott-demayo
39. Damien McCoy



I knew all the kids at
school whispered about
me behind my back. I
never caught them, but
I knew for sure. If I
tried to tell someone,
they would look at me like
I had gone crazy.

So I did some reading
and do you know what
I found? I was crazy.
Nobody would help
me, they just told me to
get over it. So
I did, by swallowing
a whole bottle of
pills. And it worked. Now, no
one talks about me.

                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/damien-mccoy
40. Taryn, the Dramatist



In the schools of Spoon
River, I
learned the truth of how people were. Their
petty grievances,
their wolfpack
mentality, their tiny codes that
formed the basis of
what they called
“real life.” When I went out into the
wider world, I saw
everywhere
else was basically the same. It was
all a comedy
of manners.
Like my plays, my life, mere comedy.




                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/taryn-the-dramatist
41. The Sheriff



I had been                           it at people - cops, criminals,
a local football hero and            citizens -
then I joined                        and make them do my bidding. Then
the Army. I came home to a           one night I
parade, and                          used that brass club to strike Russell
rumors that I had a dozen            Diedrich, and
kills. I was                         he shot me dead. The powers that
recruited into the police,           were did all
force and they                       they could to have Diedrich sent to
put me on the fast track, until      death row. But
I became                             they failed, because I haunted the
the youngest Sheriff in the town’s   dreams of the
history.                             jury foreman and told him that
They wanted an energetic,            what I got
they said a                          was just punishment for my crimes.
charismatic, force for law and
order. It
apparently was a plus that
I was the
meanest son of a bitch in town.
I had a
nightstick made of solid brass and
I would wave
                                         http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/the-sheriff
42. Russell Diedrich



I was driving home from a                 had my case was a close friend
party one night, and the sheriff          of Christian Deegan, who had made
pulled me over. I hadn’t                  Logan the Sheriff in the
been doing anything wrong, but            first place, so I knew it would be
he put me face down on the                the chair. But Kerns cut a deal
pavement anyway. He searched my           to stop his investigation
car without probable cause,               into Deegan’s stock fraud and
and found the remains of a joint.         manipulation, in exchange
                                          for giving me a shortened
He screamed at me, then pulled out        prison sentence. They gave me a
his awful nightstick and beat me          thirty-year stretch, but I was
with it. I scrabbled back to              let out after fourteen of them.
my car. He’d stopped his search when he
found the pot, so hadn’t found            While I was on the inside,
the gun. He swung the stick at my         I taught myself how to play chess.
head, and I shot him in the               There was a program where you
neck. He fell to the pavement and         could play correspondence matches
I ran away while he bled                  against professionals and
to death. When I turned myself in,        ranked experts. One time, I fought an
the guards beat on me without             International Master
mercy, until my attorney                  until he offered me a draw.
Kyle Kerns was able to
have me transferred. But the Judge who
                                          http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/russell-diedrich
43. Benton Woods



My service was during
the short lull between
Japan and Korea,
so I never saw
a real battle. But I
preached my example
to my sons, and they both
went to Vietnam,
but never came home. Now
there are no more Woods.




                            http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/benton-woods
44. Beverly Domino



I tried not to lie, and so
They made me an outcast.
I saw greed and did not call
it charity. I saw
ugliness and did not call
it beautiful. I saw
ambition and did not call
it service. And I saw
brainwashing and did not call
it an education.

For my candor, I was shunned,
hated. But it did not
matter to me. My inside
and outside were conformed.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/beverly-domino
45. James MacDonald Waring



It was ironic,
no? That the money I made from my
investments in the Trust
allowed me to fund
the town’s arts and humanities, and
provide a platform for
Deegan’s enemies.
Like the theater, symphony, my wife’s
foundation. And that the
collapse of that same
Trust ruined me and silenced all those
voices. While Deegan went
all but untouched. If
I did not know better, I’d think that
he planned it all this way.




                            http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/james-macdonald-waring
46. Shaun Bolton



The embarrassments,              smile to my face.
the mundane injuries             Now there’s simply nothing.
and the insults of
daily life were always
too much for me. My
skin, always thin, never
hardened. And one day,
my wife complaining how
I burned the chicken
again was all I could
take, so I opened
the window and jumped out.

But even here, there
is no rest. No rest, and
no freedom to change.
When I was alive, at
least there were a few
things that brought a fleeting

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/shaun-bolton
47. Ruth Middleton-Ross



All throughout school,                      time to follow my own ambitions.
they told me I was special. Brilliant,      But the drugs they
gifted, destined                            gave me to keep
for some greatness.                         my moods under control prevented
A leader of tomorrow. But I                 me from thinking
got out into                                clearly, and when
the big world and                           I tried to stop taking them, my dear
nobody cared. The only jobs I               husband had me
could get were as                           committed. When
secretary,                                  I followed their rules, they called me a
waitress, model or prostitute. Then         success. Somehow,
a rich man took                             I was never
a fancy to                                  successful enough to be allowed
me and proposed marriage. It was just       my liberty.
another kind
of job, blending
all the others. But I hoped that the
trade off would give
me money and

                                         http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/ruth-middleton-ross
48. Alexander Flagg



I spent years organizing protests
against the War in
Vietnam. Later I became an
entrepreneur and
made a killing. When they started up
another war, I
tried to make my voice heard in the great
debate. But I had
too many friends in the differing
camps, so neither side
would trust me. Pick your side and stay with
it no matter what.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/alexander-flagg
49. Dr. Gregory Vreeland



Doctors                                      keep selling them. Then the deaths
are supposed to be public                    started, and I went to prison
servants, priests and saviors. But we        for the
also                                         rest of my life. At least my
have to make money. And woe                  creditors couldn’t reach me there.
to anyone who tries to do
one at
the expense of the other.
I was just trying to help my
patients.
At first, I was as convinced
as my clients that my weight-loss
products
really worked. By the time I
was able to admit that they
didn’t,
I was so far into debt
that I didn’t have any choice
but to

                                        http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/dr-gregory-vreeland
50. Robb Chess



You won’t believe             was all a game.
what I say, but all
that money that               All games can be gamed.
you worry your lives
over, it’s all
imaginary.
And your morals
are just handicaps
beaten in to
you by all of your
competitors.
Nobody has your
interests in
mind except for you.

I built and lost
fortunes a dozen
times over, and
was unconcerned. It

                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/robb-chess
51. Claire Battaglia



My mother was always
sick, and I was born blind. All my life
people pitied me. But
what they did not see that in taking
away my sight, the Lord
gave me the gift of patience. As the
pace of world made all
those around me sick and unhappy,
I built a life and a
home and a family that was an
oasis of calm. My
husband Dom fought crippling fears all
his life, until I helped
him find peace. In a world devoted
to breaking people, my
children grew up strong, whole and unbent.

I lived a life full of
light and color. I have no complaints.

                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/claire-battaglia
52. Judge Welington Bolton



I was renowned for
having the largest personal law
library in three states.
Judges and lawyers
from all over the country would ask
to borrow my volumes.
I even loaned one
to Justice Stewart once. I guess it
was fitting then, that when
there was that giant
explosion at the shopping mall they
were building down the street
from the courthouse, that
my bookshelves would crush me to death. The
law giveth and taketh.




                           http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/judge-welington-bolton
53. Clarence Brusso



When I married her, I thought the   not imagine saying
urges would go away.                the words to my blind little girl.
But they never did, and I was       Then one day, I didn’t
forced to sneak out, to make        just hear Jesus. I saw him in
excuses, to pretend I was           front of me. Then I was
working and not at the              out of time to tell anything
baths. Then she became ill and I    to any one at all.
stayed close to home taking
care of her. Which is how we made
our poor little girl. And
years later, when the men in my
secret fellowship all
began dying horrible deaths,
I began to hear the
voice of Jesus, urging me to
confess what I had done.
I was going to. I wanted
to. I just kept putting
it off and delaying. I could

                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/clarence-brusso
54. Kharyn Green



When I grew my breasts, I           secretly they were
asked my parents what               free to do. Their scorn set
they meant. But they wouldn’t       me on my path. Had
explain. I asked my                 they answered my questions
teachers, and they told me          truthfully in the
to keep quiet. I                    first place, maybe things would
asked my friends and they laughed   have been different.
at me. So I went
to find out myself. And
I learned. I learned a
lot. From boys and girls my
own age and from men
like Giovanni Moss,
who people thought was
taking advantage of
me. But the truth was
that they sneered at me and
called me a slut for
doing what they all wished

                                     http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/kharyn-green
55. Giovanni Moss



I was never the best looking             watching the young
man in the room.                         nurses laugh at me. I wonder
But I knew how to dress, and how         if things would have
to stand in the                          been different had I taken
right light, how to speak to women       less, given more.
with just the right
tone. How to walk into a room
and make every
head turn. How to smile at the
married men while
taking their wives and daughters. Most
importantly,
how to take what I wanted and
get out with a
minimum of fuss. The mistake
I made was that
I grew old. And I ended up
living alone
in a shabby nursing home, and

                                          http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/giovanni-moss
56. Hans Bluff



I was always                  Broderick Deegan’s
chasing Kharyn Green,         real estate firm.
hoping she would              The week after I
let me in. But for            made VP, the
some reason, she              Galleria burned,
always told me no.            the company
When I saw her                collapsed, and I lost
with Giovanni                 everything. I
Moss, I was so                realized that I
embarrassed, that I           had traded the
decided in                    chase of one hussy
that instant that I           for another,
would stop spending           and neither wanted
time on frivolous             anything to
pursuits and I                do with me. Some guys
threw myself into             were just born to
my schoolwork. I              be losers, I guess.
went to business school,
and later used
my inheritance
                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/25/hans-bluff
to buy in to
57. Andrew Cairns



They always told me that
my dream of playing pro
ball was impossible,
so I left this town as
soon as I was able.
I never made it to
the majors, but I was
good enough to pitch in
Mexico and Taiwan
for many years. But then
the gamblers threatened me,
and when I told them to
shove it, they shot me down.
When I came here, I was
consoled by an ancient
roman ghost named Martius.
He said I had earned much
more than I had received.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/25/andrew-cairns
58. Darryl Cordova



My father owned the shop,          shop before reaching sixty.
and I spent most of my youth
working in it. Then he
passed it on to me and I
spent all of my days and
nights there. I somehow found time
to get a wife and have
some children, and they also
became entwined in the
life of the shop. I never
took a day off, never
had a vacation, and I
never closed except on
Christmas day. Someone once asked
me what I would do when
I got to retirement
age. I didn’t have an
answer. Turned out I didn’t
need one. I died at the

                                     http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/darryl-cordova
59. Gwendolyn Yates



They told me I didn’t have a work       call me a failure.
ethic, because I                        But I had more joy than all of them,
didn’t want to spend my life in an      combined, ever had.
office or a school.
I always asked them who invented
work in the first place?
What a funny custom, to waste your
precious time doing
something for another’s benefit,
while you get scraps of
paper in return. I preferred to
sing. You don’t need good
credit to sing, don’t need a mortgage.
Don’t need anyone’s
good opinion, neither. Don’t even
need much in the way
of food, clothing or shelter, since you
can get all of them
through singing. So many of them
    would
                                       http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/gwendolyn-yates
60. Helene Duluca



We were both thirteen, but
when they caught us they all
blamed Charlie and told me
he forced himself on me.
And so I wouldn’t get
in trouble, I agreed.
That was how I learned that
sex was bad and I could
never let it be found
out that I liked it. So
I spent years taking it
secretly, with strangers
in bars and offices
and shops. Until one night,
I picked the wrong man, and
he sent me to this place.




                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/helene-deluca
61. Rabbi Stern



Everyone thought me
to be wise, and they
were heartbroken at
my wasting illness.
The temple rallied
around me and kept
me warm, loved during
my slow descent. None
of them ever found
out that my disease
was a secret taste
for heroin, a
habit that took two
decades to kill me.




                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/rabbi-stern
62. Rita Chavez



I knew I was
the second choice, and I
was overjoyed
when my rival left. Then
Pedro belonged
to me. But many years
later, Carmen
came back, and I lost him.
It took two years
for him to get up the
courage to leave
me, but my soul died that
very first day.
And my love for him turned
to hatred, as
I vowed to never let
him out of my
grasp. I wonder what would
have happened if
I had just set him free.
                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/rita-chavez
63. Pedro Teves



Poor Rita, I swear          I was never free
I never wanted              of knowing what I
to hurt you. But we         had done to you. I
both knew I always          could never forget
loved Carmen, and as
much as I tried to
put it out of my
mind, we were meant to
be. I wish it had
not been so. I wish
it was us who were
supposed to have been
together. That way,
I would not have had
to cause you so much
pain. And even though
my life with Carmen
was everything I
had ever wanted,

                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/pedro-teves
64. Wayne Garcia



I had so many
opportunities, and
I let each of them
pass by. For good reasons,
I believed. They were
risky, they were too hard,
they would cost too much
of myself. So I stayed
home, and stayed safe. Now
look at me. I ended
up here anyway,
with nothing to show for
it. The riskiest
thing is to do nothing.




                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/wayne-garcia
65. Spencer Chadwick



They said I was crazy, a
man of seventy, marrying
a girl of thirty-five. They
said she was after my money.
Well, it was money I had,
and companionship I lacked. I
did not care that she was bought.
My long years in finance taught me
that everybody is bought
and sold, and everybody buys
and sells themselves. So I had
a few years with her and she got
all of my money after
I was gone. So what? It’s not as
if I can use any of
it here. And I’d rather she had
it than my lying children.
Whores are the only honest ones.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/05/spencer-chadwick
66. Gary, the Pilot



All my life, all
I wanted
was to break the bonds
of gravity.
To ascend
higher and higher
into the sky.
But we are
all tethered, Earth-bound.

One day, we will
escape and
take our place on high.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/gary-the-pilot
67. Ng the Salesman



All things                            been such a
are business                          cancer on the town if Shelly
propositions. Would we expend         Leithouse
so much                               paid into
money and                             that same racket? Would the never-
material and lives in the             ending
Middle                                drug war have
East, if they                         any point other than a tool
didn’t have oil we needed?            for our
And if                                leaders to
Daisey Kane’s                         restrict the same rights and freedoms
damned trade was so injurious         that brought
to the                                me to this
welfare of                            country? It’s not conspiracy
the public, wouldn’t the powers-      if it’s
that-be                               policy
shut her down,                        and happens out in the open.
regardless of how much money
she paid
them for their
                                       http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/ng-the-salesman
protection? Would the Sanctuary
68. Mayor Ellen Garrity



My good friends. I hoped
that my lifetime of
service would be valued. That
you would look kindly
on my attempts to
save you from the crime and drugs
and obscenities
that are a constant
threat to our way of life if
we do not remain
vigilant. If you
valued my sacrifice, then
you would stop that slut
Maggie Garzan and
that idiot Ridley boy
from defiling my
grave with their lustful
coupling almost every night!


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/mayor-ellen-garrity
69. Miles Kagan



I paid for many               town. I never believed
campaigns, and helped to make in anything or
the Mayor’s Office            in anyone again.
like your own home. But more
than that, you were the
fixed point on my compass,
the mother from whom
I needed approval
for each endeavor.
But when I finally
got close up and saw
how the sausage was made,
that the face you showed
to the world was a mask
that hid your spite and
venality and your
arrogance, my heart
was broken. I quit the
party and quit the

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/miles-kagan
70. Ron and Leo



While alive,
we were not
allowed to

live truly
openly
together.

Were never
permitted
to show our

love to the
town or the
world. But now

we are here
together,
forever.

And what you
think matters
not one bit.
                          http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/ron-and-leo
71. Margaret Garzan



After Micah Ridley left town       a brain, but gorgeous to
without me, I swore I’d            look at. He flattered me with his
never put my fate in the hands     attention until I
of a man again. So                 foolishly agreed to marry
when I finally moved to the        him. I should have seen that
city, I turned myself              he’d do to me what I’d done to
into a woman who needed            my husband. And now I’m
nobody and took what               back in Spoon River. Our fates are
she wanted. I socialized my        never fully our own.
way up the ranks of the
elite and married a wealthy
lawyer. He was fun when
he was drunk. After about a
year, he died suddenly,
and I inherited it all.
I moved to Rome and spent
the money for a living. I
took a lover, a man
ten years my junior. Not much of

                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/margaret-garzan
72. Mrs. Sofia Garzan



I designed                     legislation than
lingerie for a                 to simply talk with them?
living. So when my girl
Maggie got                     Didn’t all
her reputation,                of their desperate
of course the town whispered   attempts to “rescue the
that it was                    family”
my fault. And when the         end up destroying
kids followed a fad where      the family instead?
underthings
were worn openly,
of course the answer was
to picket
my shop and brand me
as anti-family.
Were they so
scared of their children
that it was easier
to enact

                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/mrs-sofia-garzan
73. Judge Sy Goldberg



When I was alive,                     tilted
I would                               from the start. The fairness that I
sit on the bench, listen to the       prided myself on
petitioners in                        was just
front of                              the self-reinforcing bias
me, and I prided myself on            of a system built
being fair, treating                  to crush.
the poor                              I should have been their advocate.
the same as the wealthy. But now,     Instead I handed
buried here, I can                    the axe
listen                                to the headsman. I sent Lukasz
to the curses from the many           Harding to Death Row.
whom I sent here, I                   But I
can hear                              was a hundred times more guilty.
what the prosecutors could keep
from the record, I
can see
the truth. The poor were not equal
at my bar. The field

                                     http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/judge-sy-goldberg
74. Busker Barney



I was playing for coins        great musicians that I’m
at the Courthouse Bus Stop.    never at a loss for
It had been a long day;        somebody to jam with.
I’d made very little.
When Russell Diedrich and
Dutch Wallis came along,
high on something, they gave
me twenty dollars to
play “Gloria” while they
bellowed along. When a
policeman started towards
us to stop their racket,
they ran away, pushing
me towards the cop to slow
him down. I tripped and fell
into the street, right in
the path of the number
7 bus. Now I’m here,
where there are so many

                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/busker-barney
75. The Salaryman



When I was                                   of the firm, with a family and
ten, my folks gave me a super-8              a mortgage,
camera,                                      and no more time left. So I gave up
and I fell in love with making films.        my dreams. But
In college,                                  by the time I passed on and was sent
I won a prize at a festival                  here, I had
and I moved                                  made enough money and knew enough
to the city to break in to the               people so
industry.                                    that my kids could work those entry jobs
But all the entry-level jobs were            for free. Each
held by the                                  generation gets a bit further.
children of the rich and connected
who could work
for no money. I took an office
job and tried
to work around it. Before I knew
it, twenty
years had passed, and I’d become the vice-
president

                                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/the-salaryman
76. Alexandra Austen



That house was the cause of all of our strife.
He inherited it
from his mother, and all his siblings
were jealous and never
forgave him. Then all the property
tax increase forced us
to sacrifice everything to keep
paying for it. And no
matter how much I tried to convince
him that we needed to
just leave it behind and start over
somewhere new, he never
could see how to extricate himself.
So one night, after we
fought about money and our future,
I torched the awful place.
Burned the fucking thing to the ground. He
divorced me, and sued me
But he never understood that I
did it to set him free.
                                        http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/alexandra-austen
77. Glenn Austen



It was a little             and his desire to                  a standoff, and I tried
bit after my sister         cover it up. Saw                   to provoke the cops
Alexandra was               the gruesome photos of             into doing the job
arrested for arson          how he tried. And as               for me, but they were
that I got chosen           I listened, I despaired,           remarkably restrained.
for jury duty. I            because I saw that                 I don’t know why. It
tried to get excused        no matter how much you             took four years of trials
by telling them about       love at the start, it              and appeals before
her, but the judge was      always turns to hatred.            they killed me anyway.
unmoved. They selected                                         I would have saved them
me to serve on the          We found him guilty,               the time and the trouble.
murder trial of that        and that night I went home
dentist, Doctor Stahl       to my pregnant wife
for killing his patient     and shot her in the head.
Zadie-Mae Lemmons.          If the boys had been
Each day we sat there and   home I would have killed them
heard evidence of           too. As it was, when
their tawdry affair, of     I tried to shoot myself,
how she got pregnant,       the gun jammed. There was

                                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/glenn-austen
78. D.A. Antonio Jackson



My life                         and healthy. And I learned that
was devoted to bringing         morality cannot be
justice, to punishing the       divorced
wicked,                         from chemistry. I think of
and upholding the standards     all those I damned to prison
of the community. My            or worse,
finest                          and I recall the triumph
hour was when I sent the        I felt when Austen went to
murderer Glenn Austen to        the chair.
death row.                      I wonder if anything
But my son was diagnosed
with schizophrenia, so          I did helped anyone. I
I quit                          doubt it.
my office as the District       My son was just another
Attorney and devoted            big case that I had to win.
myself
to his care. I studied the
working of the human brain,
damaged

                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/da-antonio-jackson
79. Jonathan Mellor



I studied all the great word men,
Bruce, Carlin, Hicks. Did you
know that as part of his act,
Mort Sahl used to just read
the Warren Commission report?
These were my heroes, the
comics who made people laugh while
forcing their eyes open
even if it meant insulting
and enraging them. I
was good at that part of the gig.
Leaving some no-name club
in some flyspeck town, somebody –
I never saw who – hit
me in the head with a cement
brick. I never woke up.




                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/jonathan-mellor
80. Johan Torres



I was born with a
defective valve in my
heart, so my life was
contained, limited, and
measured in tiny
doses. But that once with
Isabel under
the infinite stars, I
gave her everything
I had. It cost me, but
I have no regrets.
Brevity is not lack.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/johan-torres
81. LoydPahk



When I had the
stroke, I was still
waiting for my
promotion to
Director to
go through. It was
going to make
it all better.

Didn’t even
want that damn job.




                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/loyd-pahk
82. Park Shin Min



My tiny town          a one-way plane             from that thought.
outside Wonju         ticket to                   When the cancer
so stifled            America.                    came, I forbade
me, I left as         And who should be           Patty from
soon as I could.      in the seat                 sending me back
I worked in           next to mine, but           to Korea.
the clubs near the    old Sergeant Pat,           This is home.
American              who I knew
bases. I              quite well from the
waltzed with Majors   old days. We struck
and traded shots      a deal and
with Privates.        I lived with him
But I always          in Spoon River.
knew it was a         For more than
short-term gig,       twenty years, they
and I saved my        all believed we
money. At age         were married.
thirty-six,           We did nothing
I bought myself       to dissuade them

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/park-shin-min
83. Matthew Twombley



I got Doctor Centrone to
give me Viagra, but didn’t
tell him about the heart meds
I’d gotten from Doctor Golden.
I wanted to be able
to give Saskia everything,
especially after the
pain of her first two marriages.
She deserved it all, and I
deserved to finally live, no
matter how my complaining
children tried to persuade me that
I didn’t belong with a
woman thirty years my junior.
What they never understood
was that she asked me for nothing.
So I gave her everything
I had without reservation.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/matthew-twombley
84. Alejandro Mejias



The confusion does not surprise me.
Very few actual
remains were recovered from the pit,
so how were they supposed
to know that the investment banker
Nathaniel Terrel is
not entombed here, just parts of me, a
minimum-wage busboy.
I wonder if they sent his ashes
to my family in
Guatemala. Or if we are both
scattered across the world.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/nathaniel-terrel
85. A Powerful Lawyer



I                                     I kept even the smallest claim
counted myself among the most         from reaching my clients.
prosperous attorneys                  When
in                                    I died, there were memorials
the state. I spoke for the mighty:    and tributes, and a front
the Second Spoon River                page
Bank,                                 obituary. Now, I lie
Development Authority                 here, and I can feel all
Partners, and Limited                 the
Re,                                   insects scuttling across my
who insured the Galleria.
I knew all the pressure               dead skin, every maggot
points,                               that
where to apply the leverage,          squirms to life from gnawing on my
how to make things happen.            desiccated remains.
I
never lost a case. They rarely
even made it into
court.

                                     http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/a-powerful-lawyer
86. Kathy Folds



You stayed with me through
all the chemo, the
radiation, the
surgeries. Ten years
of hacking pieces
of your wife away.
And you tried to stay
strong for me. But I
saw you shriveling.
When the cancer came
back to eat at me,
and I saw I would
never again be
the woman that you
married, I let you
go. I let me go.




                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/kathy-folds
87. Joanie the Musician



I had to learn to use
my sorrow,
to turn it into my music.
I wrote songs about the
sadness my
entire life. And now I can’t
believe all the things that
I didn’t
see, all the joy I turned away
from. What I was feeling,
it wasn’t
despair. This, this here, is despair.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/28/joanie-the-musician
88. Mrs. Schneider



I dreamed of
divorcing him. But I stayed. For the
children. That’s
what Judge Goldhamer advised him. And
I got the
same sermon from Reverend Halty.
Marriage is
sacred. So I stayed. For the children.
But feelings
can never be totally repressed.
So we raised
them in a home full of poison and
misery.
They grew to hate us both equally
and fled as
soon as they could. I don’t really blame them.




                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/28/mrs-schneider
89. Mrs. Mitzi Schultz



Sometimes, the                   program again and
only thing that helped           again, and the idea that
me get through it was my set     there is an
of tapes of                      ultimate justice.
the old Twilight Zone.           I prayed for that justice to
My husband had nothing to        fall on those
do with how                      who stole him and the
Deegan’s investment              life we had planned. I still pray.
bank collapsed. But he had a
big title
and no true friends, so
he took the fall. He went to
prison and
left me alone to
raise our children. I did my
part, and they
grew up the best they
could. What kept me going was
watching that

                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/29/mrs-mitzi-schultz
90. Rev. Clay Halty



Of all my                   saw their children,
accomplishments             and their calm, quiet
in the decades I
preached in Spoon
River, of all
the sermons and the
conversions
and retreats, the
one thing I’m most proud
of is how
I was able
to keep the Schneiders,
with God’s help,
from succumbing
to the secular
temptation
to rip their whole
family apart.
Each time I

                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/29/rev-clay-halty
91. Allan Bivans



I spent most of my            was the most valued
life struggling for the       substance in the world. And
control over my               I imagined two
family’s chain of gas         Silk Road-trading brothers
stations. My brother          locked in a never-
resented me because           ending feud over their
our father sent me            salt, and how silly
to college, while he had      that would look to modern
to stay home and work         folks. At that moment,
the business. When Dad died   I decided to sell
and left it all to            him my half of the
us, he did everything         business. I was on my
he could to force me          way to tell him, and
out and make my life Hell.    imagining how I
Every day was filled          would use the proceeds
with arguments about          to start a whole new life
oil and gasoline.             for myself far from
One day, I was in a           here, when I had the stroke.
restaurant, looking
at the salt shakers on
all the tables, and
                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/29/allan-bivans
recalling that once, salt
92. Rev. Jeremy Sheaffer



After I
passed, the Church auctioned off
my effects as a fundraiser.
It was my
idea, to let each of
them have a tiny piece of their
shepherd for
a memorial, as
he departed for a distant,
better land.
But that didn’t mean I
wanted my filing cabinets
bought by Bob
Clemmond, who everyone
knew was the town’s worst drug dealer.
He dumped all
of my papers at the
recycling plant. The Almighty
only knows
what disgusting poisons
he displaced all my sermons with.
                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/rev-jeremy-sheaffer
93. Roosevelt Feinstein



I fought them all of my days. For rights
for all. For freedom of conscience, for
freedom of choice, for freedom from fear.
But long years in the State House tend to
blur the factions in the eyes of the
people. And you can’t win every fight.
So when I won, I was “just doing
what I was supposed to do." When I
compromised, I was “complicit with
evil.” And when I was beaten, I
was “pathetic.” By the end, my once-
loud voice had been diminished to a
whisper. Oh, they gave me an ornate
funeral with grand remembrances.
But during the eulogy, I know
my unwrinkled successors cut deals
and traded horses in the cloak room.
I hope they fare better than I did.


                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/roosevelt-feinstein
94. Judge Terence Visser



All those liberal
lions, Kerns and Feinstein and
O’Meara, they loved to
laugh at me, and judge
me for my aspirations.
For some reason, they felt
I was not worthy
to stand in their company.
How much did they regret
their snobbery, when
my years as Deegan’s counsel
led to a seat on the
Bench? How much did they
have to swallow their jokes and
plaster fake smiles on their
faces when making
a petition to My Court?
Oh, how I made them pay.


                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/judge-terence-visser
95. Kelvin Platt



Thom Kerns always complained   failures. I had no
how ashamed he was             identity of my
that his children never        own. That’s why I ran
amounted to much.              for the seat on the School
He never understood            Board. I spent all my
that I had it so               money, but I still lost.
much worse. My children were   My kids wanted to
successful beyond              support me after that.
anyone’s reckoning.            I would not let them.
They all left me, to           I pushed them away. My
go to New York, Paris,         end came soon after.
Kuala Lumpur,
Berlin, and God knows where
else. They rarely came
home. And all anyone
asked me was about
them. Every success they
had made me that much
more ashamed of my own

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/kelvin-platt
96. Thom Kerns



I never quite
got why Kelvin Platt
was always so
miserable when
folks asked about
his amazing kids.
I’d have given
almost anything
to have just one
of mine become so
luminous. In
and out of jail. On
and off of drugs.
They were disgraceful
and disgusting.
Shame, or the drinking
that covered it –
not sure which killed me.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/thom-kerns
97. Christine Novell



They never knew what to call the thing,
whatever it was I
had. Lupus, Lyme, Epstein-Barr, Fibro,
CFS, Depression,
allergies, and on and on. Or worse,
it was all in my head,
and no insurance code applied.
Every year, a new drug
that was supposed to work, which only
made it worse. Never a
moment without pain that didn’t feel
wrong, artificial, not
me. But now there is no more pain and
I’m finally at peace.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/christine-novell
98. Ikrimahibn Khalid



They were always making fun
of the way
I dressed and the way I prayed.
Always trying to convert
me. After,
they looked at me full of
suspicion and hatred. Or
with fear, as
if I would detonate
myself at any minute.
I tried to
show them the truth of my
people and our history.
Then, Willy
Halty, the Minister’s
son, beat me to death with a
baseball bat.
Peace be unto you all.


                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/ikrimah-ibn-khalid
99. Simon Leigh Goldhamer



People say they like                    shun, reject, deny
the truth. But the truth                that it even could be possible.
is they really prefer a story.
                                        Story is the world
And if the story                        The world is story.
isn’t the truth, they’ll                We can’t see differently, and believe
transform that story into the truth.    fairy tales. Like the
                                        Holy Trinity
But it goes further                     of the Beginning, Middle and End.
than that. Truth only
becomes capable of being seen,
recognized as the
truth, if it can be
seen in the outline of a story.

And we’ve become so
that if it does not
fit into the story, we cannot
even see it. We

                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/simon-leigh-goldhamer
100. Moreland, the Columnist



I got fired from the paper
for doing
the same thing that got me lauded in
the first place. I would talk to the
powerful
and write about them. But I did not
take dictation. I tried to show
them as they
truly were. They usually didn’t
like it. But it was more than a
fair trade for
their dominion over us, I thought.

But I crossed the line when I wrote
my profile
of Judge Goldhamer. He was not pleased.
Somebody called someone, and soon
I was out
of a job. But nobody said I
didn’t get the story right. I
take that to
my grave and you bet it keeps me warm.
                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/23/moreland-the-columnist
101. Harmonie Fisher



Life was a competition. For
me to succeed others
had to fail. So I made damn sure
they would. I undermined
confidence, ruined plans, spoiled
hopes, and bent those around
me to do what I wanted. When
they broke, I discard
them and simply found others I
could manipulate. But
eventually, I ran out
of people and I ran
out of time. In the end I was
alone. If you prevail
in a competition and the
losers are not there to
see it, then the victory is
empty and meaningless.


                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/23/harmonie-fisher
102. Christian Deegan



So, everybody hated and feared
me, you say? What of it?

While the so-called moralists and the
righteous and the preening
intellectuals bleated about
meaning and justice and
truth, I laughed at them. The only truth,
the only meaning, is
influence. It’s the first law of the
universe. How do you
move a thing that will not move? I spent
a life collecting and
using influence to make the world
in my image. Lesser
people complained and judged, but they were
merely too cowardly
to take that power for themselves. They
can’t touch me. Never could.

                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/23/christian-deegan
103. MaureeneTringo



After years of work, reams of forms,     defend my new homeland.
and waiting and waiting,
I finally qualified to                   I wonder if anybody
be an American                           made Deegan swear that oath.
citizen. I went in to the
city that day to take
part in a special swearing-in
ceremony, led by
the Attorney General of
the whole country! And I
almost missed it. I couldn’t get
to the courthouse, because
the road was blocked for some bigwigs.
(Later, I found out it
was Christian Deegan, being freed
from some tax burden.) But
in spite of that huge motorcade,
I got there in time to
take my oath to serve, protect and

                                         http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/maureene-tringo
104. Thomas Winter



We were one of the first         died in an accident.
families, founders of            Hank overdosed on pills
Spoon River. My great-great-     after his great disgrace.
grandfather built our house.     Sally’s husband beat her
Generations of the               until she became a
Winters came from that home,     ghost of herself. Philip
to write our name across         contracted a syndrome,
the world. Until I failed        undiagnosable
them all. I did every            and incurable. And
thing I was supposed to –        Maria just gave up
sent my children to the          for some reason no one
best schools, secured for them   ever learned. All of them
prestigious jobs and well-       broken by life. While I
bred partners. I followed        succeeded at every
the plan. I grew richer          goal, but preserving the
and more influential.            family legacy.

But James embezzled and
fled overseas. Janie

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/thomas-winter
105. Phillip Thomas Winter



I was in and out of all            not answer no. So I
the best hospitals, and            redoubled my efforts.
all the advanced clinics,          I demanded my father
while father spent his money       treat her like a daughter.
trying to make me well.            But then I died, and I
I had a theory that                don’t know if he did or if
the nurses at these places         she just moved on. I wish,
were all selected for              Sienna. Oh, I wish.
their allure, so as to
seduce a patient into
getting well. It never
worked. Until I came home,
and they hired Sienna.
She was not pretty. But
she was beautiful. How
I wanted to get well for
her. The harder I tried
the worse it got. I asked
her to marry me. She did

                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/phillip-thomas-winter
106. Maria Winter



When you lose your soul-
mate, you lose a piece of
yourself. And when your
soul-mate turns their back on
you, the little bit
of you that remains is
poisoned. They thought I
gave up and hid from the
world. But really I
was trying to drive the
poison out, purge and
rebuild myself. I was
almost able to.
If I’d had five more years,
maybe I would have.
But I ran out of time.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/maria-winter
107. Paul Welch



I’m so sorry                 good enough for you
Maria. I did                 again. I’m so
not meant it to              ashamed, Maria.
happen like it did.          You deserved so
But life in the              much better than me.
city was strange and
complicated.
And I feared that Spoon
River would make
me feel trapped and bored.
I was far from
bored in the city,
even before
Rachel LeDoux found
me. But once I
was with her, I was
trapped anyway,
and I knew that I
could never be

                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/paul-welch
108. Rachel LeDoux



The funny thing is, I          I lost him, and with him
never even liked sex           my best candidate for
all that much. But every       security. After
body else did, so it           there was just a string of
gave me power over             diminishing prospects.
them. I tormented my
stepfather, until I
was thrown out of the house.
I was still learning and
refining. I moved to
the city, where I plowed
through a list of lovers,
men and women, each one
dancing to my tune. Paul
Welch was my best score; I
thought I might even make
him marry me. But then
one of my exes warned
him about my past, so

                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/rachel-ledoux
109. Anya Kirillov



I came here from                        things to placate her wrath. So we
Poland when I was a girl, and           both stayed out of
got work as a                           sight until the baby came. Then
domestic in the White home. One         they quietly
day, when Mrs.                          sent me to work somewhere else. Years
White was out, Mr. White trapped me     later, I found
in the kitchen.                         DolphKirilov, and we built our
I kept quiet, afraid they would         own family.
send me back to                         And it was sweet. But whenever
Poland. But soon I began to             people saw me
show. And Mrs.                          crying at the eloquence of
White came to me. I thought she would   one of Benson
kill me. But she                        White’s speeches, they had no idea
had a plan. They had no children        that inside I
of their own, so                        was screaming that he was my son.
she would take the baby and claim
that it was hers.
I’m sure that Mr. White gave her
many other

                                           http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/anya-kirillov
110. Benson White



All that I achieved – Judge,
Congressman, and a
Candidate for the State
House – was possible
only because of the
inheritance I
received from my parents,
Thomas and Gail White.
From my father, I got
my morals, ethics,
and sense of duty. From
my mother, I learned
how to take all of life
in stride, and rejoice
even in the parts that
seemed to be setbacks.
Everything that I was,
was because of them.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/benson-white
111. Gil Tam



I always               believed there
argued that            was no such
religion               thing as an
and God were           afterlife.
just fictions.         So I’m not
Stories used           sure what this
to explain             is right here,
things beyond          where I am.
our ken. It            But I am
did not make           willing to
me the most            entertain
popular                theories on
man in Spoon           it without
River, a               bowing down
town that was          and giving
quite pious.           praise to the
But I stuck            Christian god.
to my guns.
I also

                            http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/03/gil-tam
112. Steve Biscoe



Gil and I loved to
argue religion. He
was a wonderful
fellow and a hopeless
secularist. When
my cancer was in its
final stages, he
would visit me often,
and I looked forward
to those more than any
perfunctory drop-
in by the folks who just
felt obligated.
The last thing I said to
him before I died
was that I looked forward
to settling the
question once and for all.
But wouldn’t you know
it, he’s still not convinced.
                                    http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/03/steve-biscoe
113. Laurent Arno



I knew she cheated on me.
A Minister
cannot divorce his wife and
expect to keep
his position. So I bore
it. Even as
I took on more outside work.
I wrote books on
how to live a Godly life.
None of them did
too well, as if people could
intuit that
I was lying. I prayed for
one of them to
succeed, so I could afford
to abandon
the Ministry and divorce
her. I never did.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/laurent-arno
114. Imogene Arno-Niles



I kept my secrets in life.
I’ll keep them in
death. There is nothing
I can say to you that you
could possibly
understand. Move on.




                             http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/imogene-arno-niles
115. Eugene Blantz



I entered politics
to make things better. But
after all the years, all
the deals, all the goddamned
compromises it took
before I finally
won election to the
State Legislature, I
don’t think that I had the
faintest notion what was
right anymore. So I
sold my vote on the big
eminent domain bill
that favored the Deegan
Trust, and naturally I
got caught and went to jail.
I wish I had stuck to
being a shoe salesman.


                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/eugene-blantz
116. Lonnie Marchetti



A fuck-up like me, a
man who had wasted decades on drugs
and booze, who had cut a
swath of destruction through lives in three
states; it’s ironic that
such a wretch could come out the other
side of his Trial and
be able to lead a ministry
for the fallen. I had
replaced the ecstasy of meth with
the bliss of Jesus. He
saved me in every sense of the word.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/lonnie-marchetti
117. Sheri O’Brien



You may have gone far
away from here, and had
a life rich with sights
and experiences
that far outstripped what
I had in my short time.
But you know at your
core, that it will never
be enough, it will
never make amends, it
will never make you
forget that you have it
all because of what
you stole from me. But still,
even though I’m gone
too early, my time was
more truly alive
than your glamorous lie.


                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/sheri-o'brien
118. “Big Ed” Thag



I guess there’s                 to live
always                          in a town where
been two kinds of               those folks were
folks, the ones                 the ones
who see                         in charge. But, I
things how they are,            have a hunch
and the ones                    that if
who see                         the other team
them as they think              had been in
they ought to                   control,
be. I                           they woulda not
had struggles a lot.            treated me
I gotta                         all that
say that                        much different.
most of them were
caused by the
second
type. Guess I had
the bad luck

                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/big-ed-thag
119. MireleBulinski



Tell me – if you could do it
all over again, start over
from the beginning, with a
clean slate, would you? Neither would I.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/mirelle-bulinski
120. The Anonymous



He was rich.
He was powerful. He took what he
wanted from
me and discarded the emptied husk.
Then his men
tidied up and dumped me in the woods.
The moment
he saw me, I didn’t stand a chance.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/the-anonymous
121. Joel Addams Loxley



I know it’s not                    lofty heights, acquired
popular opinion,                   baggage and beholders,
and it flies in the face           creditors and
of the myth of                     compromises. And yet
America. But you                   most would say he was the
must admit that, being             better choice to
born wealthy and                   hold the power. But be
with needs fulfilled, I was        careful what leaders you
able to study the                  wish for. At least
intricacies                        the independently
of public policy                   wealthy can be stolid,
and government and turn            dispassionate
myself into                        in their government. Their
an exemplary, true,                bread's already buttered.
servant of the people.
Whereas my chief
rival DekeStayn, on his
long climb through the ranks to
ascend to his

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/joel-addams-loxley
122. DekeStayn



Breeding and an
education are
nice, but I’ll take
a worker that’s made
his own way in
the world. I started
sweeping up a
factory floor, and
by the end, there
was nobody in
America
who would not listen
to what I said.
Power earned, twice as
strong as power
inherited. The
one avenue
to true liberty.


                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/deke-stayn
123. Pierce Leithouse



People think it was the
way the town leaders demonized my
daughter that led me to
defect to the other party and
lead them to drive out my
former friends. And it’s true that the switch
happened then. But more than
pride or fatherly protectiveness
was behind it. It struck
me, suddenly, that people who crave
power over others
in the name of security and
order, are truly just
interested in power for its
own sake. And that power,
once ceded, can never be reclaimed.
And I saw my part in
constructing an architecture of
coercion. I felt called
upon to repent and make amends.
                                        http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/pierce-leithouse
124. Howard, the Station Boss



Everybody clamors                    secure. I knew
for the truth.                       enough to bring them all
I could give it to you in            down. But why
any way you                          in the world would I? Besides,
pleased. We liked to deride          none of you want
those who claimed                    to know where the bodies
truth was purely subjective          are buried.
as being French                      And democracy is just
Communists. But really,              for schoolchildren.
they were our
best friends. My job was to
manufacture
truth, to serve whoever
was pulling
the strings. If the Mayor stayed
in office, if
Deegan’s profits stayed fat,
and if my
ratings remained high, I was

                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/howard,-the-station-boss
125. Maryann Stillson



I ran my laundry for most
of my days. I cleaned clothes for all
kinds of people. Rich and poor,
liberal and conservative,
the influential and the
invisible. They all had sweat
stains, brown streaks, stink. Don’t care who
you were. Only the dead are clean.




                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/maryann-stillson
126. Doug Linke



All I said was              national pride be
that American               self-evident?
policy had                  And if you have to
something to do with        bellow it and
it, some measure            enforce it through fear
of blame. A fairly          and coercion,
innocuous                   isn’t it worthless?
statement, and one that
many learned
people would agree
with behind closed
doors. But I said it
out loud, on the
air, so they destroyed
my career and
slandered my name. All
in the name of
patriotism.
But shouldn’t that

                               http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/doug-linke
127. Philip Dent



My lifetime belonged to       and flattering
Christian Deegan.             his vanity. I had
I gave his bank my time,      no time left to
eleven, twelve,               build my own life. Which is
thirteen hours every          why I chose the
day, six days a               front of his office to
week. And on Sundays, I       shoot myself in
went to his church            the head. Hopefully, I
and heard to his minister,    got a few drops
the Reverend                  of blood on his handmade
Sheaffer, tell me how my      Italian shoes.
toil would get
me into heaven. But
all I saw from
that work was a dingy
apartment and
a dingy life. I spent
all of my days
enriching his accounts

                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/philip-dent
128. Ernie Coffin



After what Dent did         police, and the next day,
to himself, I was next      every news show and
in line to fill the         paper screamed the story
vacancy. But they gave      about my fraud and
it to someone else.         embezzlement, and how
Old Deegan knew, somehow,   the noble bankers
that I had taken            were dedicated to
a few work computers        fighting corruption.
home and sold them to       He needed a scapegoat.
pay off my girl’s doctor    I gave him what he
bills that insurance        needed and lost it all.
wouldn’t cover. He called
me on the carpet,
and assured me that he
would have mercy on
me and my family,
if I just confessed.
So I did. But he turned
me over to the

                              http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/ernie-coffin
129. Lafayette Lincoln Jones



When I first became a lawyer, it          of all the luminaries
was to help defend the poor               of the city. The
and vulnerable                            rest of my career was a plummet,
from injustice and exploitation.          away from the centers of
But the more successful you               power, until at
get, the further you                      last I was back with the poor, where I
get from the people who are needy.        started. And how I despised
So I found I'd become a                   them and their weakness.
highly-paid legal
gunslinger, who changed sides on every
issue he used to hold fast
to. Which may explain
how I stumbled so badly when I
defended the arsonists
who torched the City
Council building. Kyle Kerns ripped my
case apart. He shredded my
reputation, and
all but destroyed my manhood, in front

                                     http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/lafayette-lincoln-jones
130. Professor Newcomb



Evolution must have selected
in favor of religious
belief, otherwise why would it be
in every single human
society? I tried to unlock
the secrets of why that was,
but I only alienated
both sides of the argument.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/professor-newcomb
131. Broderick Deegan



It’s true, my reckless speculation
led to the collapse of
my father’s bank. But it’s not as if
he did not know I was
doing it or that he didn’t give
me some of his money
to secretly invest so he did
not pay taxes on it.
And it’s also true that I lived in
a penthouse in Buenos
Aires while that Schultz fellow served time
for my crimes. And yet, guilt
has a way of compounding interest
more ruthlessly than my
father ever dreamed of. Which is how
I found myself leaping
in front of an express train, to end
a misery that I'd
not even noticed had eroded
my desire to live.
                                 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/broderick-deegan
132. Mo Nickle



Some folks                     thinking that it would be
just have bad luck. I was      The One.
always                         The One where they valued
the best worker at what-       me and
ever                           repaid my loyalty.
job I had. So I was            I thought
always                         the Galleria job
the first one laid off. They   would be
said I                         a new beginning too.
was indispensable,             Instead
until                          it was a final end.
they dispensed with me. And
always
just when I was due for
a raise
or a promotion. And
stupid
me, I went into each
new job

                                  http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/22/mo-nickle
133. CharlaNoxon



I killed him. He didn’t       insignificant and
like that I wouldn’t          poor simply vanish.
choose him, preferring a
boy who didn’t have           And then I got sick. So
his money. So he hit          I went back to the
me, and I shot him            city, and turned myself
dead. But his daddy paid,     in. My short time left
so his friends in the         was worth spending to watch
media lied and said           them wriggle in the light.
it was an tragic
accident. The money
that must’ve changed hands.

I escaped home to Spoon
River and hid. But
they never came for me.
And Spoon River was
just the same. The rich and
powerful made the

                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/22/charla-noxon
134. Shawn Rigby



Yes, I was high. I
won’t deny that. But
I just stopped to shut
my eyes for a bit.
I was going to
move again in a
minute, after I
caught my breath. I had
no idea the yard
I was on belonged
to the Mayor. I
wasn’t bothering
no one. She didn’t
need to scream like that.
And her bodyguard
didn’t need to shoot.




                                http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/22/shawn-rigby
135. Marc Lyon



I did love her.                 a witness in
But I could not                 a federal
get away. I                     case that would keep
thought if I was                me sequestered
cruel, she would leave          for a whole year.
me first. But her               She cried and cried,
capacity                        but told me that
to absorb hurt                  she would pray for
seemed limitless.               the day I would
I lied, I found                 come back to her.
reasons to stay                 She knew I would,
away as much                    long before I
as I could. I                   knew. She owned me.
manufactured                    So I gave in,
emergencies,                    stopped trying to
catastrophes,                   run. She was by
and crises that                 my side, grasping
kept me from home.              my wrists, when I
Once, I told her                finally died.
I needed to
testify as
                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/25/marc-lyon
136. Tanya Lyon



He could not even               But I built my
look me in the                  life with him, and I
eye while he told that          was not about
ridiculous                      to throw it away
story about his                 just because he
“Federal case.”                 was too weak and scared
But I pretended                 to keep going.
to believe it.
I knew the truth, all
of his lies. The
business travel. The
overnight trips
into the city
that just happened
to put him there the
same time as that
harlot Sophia
Garzan. I was
fooled by none of it.

                                   http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/25/tanya-lyon
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The Spoon River Metblog

  • 1. The Spoon River Metblog A group blog adaptation of “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters Written by Jay Bushman Produced by The Loose-Fish Project: Adapting classic texts to the web Originally published in 2008 http://spoonriver.metblogs.com
  • 2. The Source: Spoon River Anthology When they first appeared serially in the magazine Reedy’s Mirror in 1915, the 244 poems that make up Spoon River Anthology were a scandal and a sensation. A poet named Webster Ford, visiting the cemetery in his fictional hometown of Spoon River, Illinois, hears the testimony of the local dead. Each individual poem is one person’s epitaph. Some of them have attained wisdom in their passing. Some cling to the grudges of their living days. Some cry for justice. Some ask for forgiveness. Many relate their part in the culture war between liberals and conservatives that split their town in two. Most, but not all, are unquiet. Each individual testimony reveals more detail about the larger stories occurring in the town, with people augmenting or contradicting their neighbors. Masters used plain and blunt language to describe their inner, secret lives, touching on topics such as abortion, murder, infidelity and atheism, and ripping the veneer off the image of idyllic small town life. When the poems were assembled, augmented and reordered in book form in 1916, it became the second best-selling volume of American poetry of all-time. Today it is a standard text in many high school English classes and acting schools, and stage adaptations are regularly performed.
  • 3. 244 Voices From The Grave “The Spoon River Metblog” updates this complex narrative while returning to the original serial form of distribution. In this version, the town is a different Spoon River, a microcosm of a shrinking America. Here too, a culture war raged, secrets were kept, people loved and betrayed and murdered. We hear 244 of the departed bear witness to the meaning, or lack of meaning, of their lives. Our guide here is not a poet; instead, a writer named George Dillon Davidson records the epitaphs of the dead in a kind of syllabic prose. The story is told in the form of a Metblog. Metrobloggingis a worldwide network of city- specific blogs, where groups of authors write stories about life in their city from a personal, hyper-local perspective. Bode Media, the publishers of Metroblogging, built a fictional Metblog site for Spoon River at http://spoonriver.metblogs.com. The epitaphs as relayed by Davidson are published as individual blog posts. And there is a hidden code which leads the reader to uncover even more of the town’s secrets… Meet the people of Spoon River
  • 4. 1. I, Metadata The might remain to tell your stories holographic memory stores or en- damn your enemies. To confess un- ciphered throughout our brains; our We, love of your family or warn our of Us, our I; the thing we whisper night- those fatal mistakes. To pronounce time pleas and stories to. The hub wise edicts and foolish rules. And some of nights, feeling and of knowing and of there’d be me there, listening for you. self. You could have (sort of) eternal Spoon River’s legacy is here, life, in let it be imaged in software xerox-constructed epitaphs and built into your grave site. You’d be by George Dillon Davidson long expired, but your encoded Soul http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/i-metadata
  • 5. 2. Lukasz Harding I’m buried right next to Jim Waring, the stockbroker. later they gave me a I remember he made lethal injection. Now I a mint in the dot com boom, lie next to Jim. Seems our went bankrupt, and somehow two roads led to the same place. ended up even richer than before, while I lost everything I had and more. Seeing how the wealthy just took what they felt they could get away with, I went and robbed a mini-mart store and accidentally shot the clerk at the counter. He was an immigrant, a father of four and I killed him. I plead guilty and got death row, where five years http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/lukasz-harding
  • 6. 3. Marion Rankin-Dyer My husband was a cruel man. He never laid a finger on me, but there was no love in his eyes no matter what he said. I knew. Years went by quietly. He wore me down, and my spirit smothered until the face in my mirror looked at me with the same contempt. I withered and died. But I am content, because now it haunts him, that awful face. He knows what he did to me. That is my revenge. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/marion-rankin-dyer
  • 7. 4. Nathan Rankin-Dyer She’s always there, watching me. Before, beautiful and young, later drained, accusatory. Now, from behind my own eyes. What did I do to deserve this end? Who am I fooling? I know what I did. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/nathan-rankin-dyer
  • 8. 5. Ira Hernandez I spent years in the garage, trying to make my vision real. Dreaming of the systems, the software, the networks, code I could recite like poetry. Then one day, it all came together as I planned and I saw myself standing in the company of all the famous garage geniuses, and in excitement I tripped over a power cord and dashed my brains all over the floor of the garage. I thought work was supposed to be its own reward. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/05/29/ira-hernandez
  • 9. 6. Evan Loy They called me good. No one knew. They called me nice. No one knew. They called me a gentleman, always with a kind word or gesture. So they never knew, the fools. And they never will. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/evan-loy
  • 10. 7. Fat Tina Ugly me, I never had anyone who saw what I could feel on the inside. They just pointed and gave me a name that I would never lose. They say that all people are beautiful in some way but nobody ever found mine. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/fat-tina
  • 11. 8. Suze Mueller I got pregnant But he knows, and I know that my second year of college he killed me as and Michael said sure as if he’d cut my throat. we should have the baby. And when I told him about the sad history of the women in my family, that I was terrified, he would not listen to me. I relented, carried to term and died while giving birth to a baby girl. And now he raises her and they all say how he’s selfless, honorable, and that the whole story is a tragedy http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/suze-mueller
  • 12. 9. Tammy Wilkes I lost my sister to drugs, and took in her two daughters to raise. Mya and Janice grew to hate me, but I don’t blame them and neither should you. I was too hard on them, thinking that discipline would save them from their mother’s fate. But all I did was drive them back to the street. I was supposed to keep them safe but I failed. May God forgive me. I swear I tried my best. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/tammy-wilkes
  • 13. 10. Mike Ely I was shot dead that the deal for the five was illegal bucks of crack I’d somehow. It just bought. They was a giant buried me, an scandal and indigent, they were forced to in Potter’s Field. pay to move That was fine. all the corpses It was just what to new graves I had earned. Which is how I But then they sold ended up the graveyard here, in the same to a bigshot ground where they real estate put that banker developer and his wife, to build a you know, the ones big shopping mall. that always It came out were on TV. in the papers http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/02/mike-ely
  • 14. 11. Judge AbnerGoldhamer It’s just not fair, is it? A respected Judge, pillar of the community, friend to all the right people, a man who spent his lifetime upholding the law, seeing wrong punished, virtue rewarded. So why am I buried here with no marker of all my great accomplishments while that drug addict Michael Ely gets a headstone of Italian marble? There is no justice in Spoon River. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/judge-abner-goldhamer
  • 15. 12. Eleanor Stargall Do you remember when the kids off to die, but you were Republicans paid Mike Ely too busy waving flags to hear. to gather up street people My gift to you Spoon River. and go around town disrupting Democratic polling sites Have your fucking war. Choke on as a part of their dirty tricks it. campaign to buy another term for our Mayor Garrity? What you won’t remember is when I packed it in after years fighting them on behalf of a “public interest” most of the public had no interest in protecting. So I took the bribe they offered me and shut up while they elected that moron Robin Parker to Congress. I could have warned you he’d send our http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/eleanor-stargall
  • 16. 13. Kyle Kerns Give this message dear Mayor Judy to our esteemed town Garrity, the leaders who have avatar of our survived me. Titans morality. of Spoon River: The righteous ones whom Christian Deegan, and I spent my life his gross fortune, opposing in and corrupting all that out of court and it touched. The right who have all outlived Reverend Sheaffer me. Tell them not preaching decades to worry. I got worth of bile with here first, and I’m impunity. building a brand new Don Howard, with his Circle of Hell television just for them. Tell them station pumping lies I’m waiting and and circuses I will see them soon. around the clock. And don’t forget our http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/kyle-kerns
  • 17. 14. Benjamin Ridley I was a happy kid who grew to be a happy man, a lawyer, a community voice, I was friends with men and women of all persuasions. And then I met her. We were married, and things changed. My friends said she made me ashamed, timid, and my standing became diminished. We argued for years, decades. She always won. By the time I left, I had nowhere to go, nobody who would give me refuge. So I lived out my days sleeping on the short couch in my tiny office. At least I could Smoke there without hearing Her tell me what I was doing Wrong. At least I had that. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/benjamin-ridley
  • 18. 15. Tysha Ridley-Sampson I fell in love with him because of how his smoky breath excited me. But when I had to live with it every day, a constant reminder of how his values were opposed to mine, I could not forget it. I could not let it go. That scent never lost its power, even after I drove him away. How can love and disgust be able to live together in peace? http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/06/tysha-ridley-sampson
  • 19. 16. Micah Ridley It took me years to years after I thought see that all I became of it as a silly was made possible juvenile crush. It because of Miss Travis. was twenty years before I was headed to I saw that I was jail or worse. I was bent measuring all of my on destroying my lovers against the self, since destruction was template of you. I wish all I had learned to I could have told you, do. But Miss Travis was consequences be damned. the only one in all of godforsaken Spoon River who gave me reason to believe I had a future. Miss Travis, I never told you how much I was in love with you. For http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/micah-ridley
  • 20. 17. Genevieve Travis I taught hundreds of students, thousands. I only ever loved one, dear Micah. I was so proud when you escaped this town and made a life for yourself in the world. Even if I dreamed you might come back someday and pined for it, I’m glad you never did. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/genevieve-travis
  • 21. 18. Santiago Rufino, Pharm.D. You have to know which drugs can be taken with what other drugs and which can’t, if you want to own a pharmacy like I did. Too bad there’s no equivalent science for mixing personalities. Two people who are whole on their own can form less than the sum of their parts when mixed. The Ridley-Sampsons there are a good example. Fine as individuals but disastrous when blended and resulting in a toxic reaction like their son. Even an expert can be surprised sometimes, like when my wife poisoned me to death with chemicals that she pilfered from my own store. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/santiago-rufino-pharmd
  • 22. 19. Daisey Kane For a while there I was was paid for with public menace money that came from “fees” number one. The symbol and “taxes” and of all that was “punitive judgments” on wrong in Spoon River. Just what they called vice. get rid of me How much money from my and all would be perfect pocket paid for and pure. Except the schools, the streets, the cops, how much of Don Howard’s the services kickbacks found their that made Spoon River run? way to the town coffers? Do you wonder Or the windfall why they never shut me in stock Judge Fairlawn cashed down completely? in after he If they had tried, the town ruled in the favor of would have fallen Deegan Partners? apart, along with their And didn’t Reverend moral veneer. Sheaffer live in a mansion while most of his flock was poor? http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/daisey-kane And how much of the town
  • 23. 20. Benjamin Ridley Kane I could always see all the people behind the people, the ghosts trailing mutely behind them, unable to give warnings or laugh at mistakes. Nobody else could, but me. And I would try speaking to them, to decipher http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/benjamin-ridley-kane
  • 24. 21. Efa Underwood I wrote my many injustices that came next. little stories, and folks rolled their eyes. I had no “Who’s ever family to support me, mother gonna read these?” “Nothing happens.” “I long vanished, don’t get it.” father too mired in old ways to I was keener on divining things even speak unspoken about it, and no money for an between people who are all alone, abortion than simple I begged Doctor Golden for help. He turning of a story’s mechanics. delivered me into the world, and I pleaded The best place with him to to observe the animals at play deliver me again. He agreed was always to help me. the bar at the Butcher’s Block. But there But something went wrong and I didn’t are cruel beasts recover. out there, who only hear what they say It took eight horrible weeks for me to themselves. to fade and That’s how I was pinned by the claws of die, while Doctor Golden was dragged through Dutch Wallis, the mud and who trapped me in the alley behind held responsible. Him, not Wallis. Butcher’s, and savaged me. He broke my bones, knocked out Seems it was my teeth, raked true. No one understood my stories. my skin, spilled my blood and left me a pregnancy. That he got away with it was just the first of http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/11/efa-underwood
  • 25. 22. Llewelyn Underwood There were Underwoods in this part of the country when it was still a colony. But instead of the legacy of the founders of this town, all you saw was a sad, poor laborer carting a case home from the Cut-Rate. And then my bitch wife ran off. And then what you all did to my poor Efa. I was the last of the Underwoods. There are no more. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/llewelyn-underwood
  • 26. 23. Dutch Wallis I was finally But because I was took it. It wasn’t able to sober up. smoking where I shouldn’t nearly enough to pay have been, workers comp for my expenses, And I got a job denied my claim, and I and ran out quickly but working as a third-shift was forced to sue the I solved that with a janitor at the owner of the mall. Which return to my drinking. big new Galleria. turned out to be a One Monday morning, company owned by Rod I was working in the Deegan. Which meant that basement and stopped for the expired permits a smoke break. When I lit and failed inspections the match, there was a were covered up. The Judge giant explosion. I in the case, like all got second and third of them, a friend of the degree burns all over. Deegans, allowed the case to be delayed so It turned out there were long that there was no methane leaks all over way I could afford all the building, and it the medical bills was a miracle that and legal fees. So when it hadn’t burned while they offered me a full of people shopping. tiny settlement, I http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/dutch-wallis
  • 27. 24. Doctor Robert Golden A lifetime of service, the stroke killed her. I helping and healing followed her soon after, families, meant nothing never convicted of when I could not save poor any crime, never Efa Underwood. found innocent either. My name and picture on every newspaper cover, every television screen. Charged with manslaughter. And the protestors! I went to medical school with a good friend of that Doctor Sleppian, so how could I take the threats idly? I could see vengeful killers in every crowd. The strain weighed on my wife, until http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/doctor-robert-golden
  • 28. 25. Mrs. Inez Golden He spent the remainder of my life and his railing against his public disgrace. He thinks the strain killed me. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I thought he was guilty. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/doctor-robert-golden
  • 29. 26. Kevin Winterbaum It was somewhere near Basra, I think, where I died. Bleeding into the sand, all I could think about was how none of my troublemaking was worth it, and when they gave me the choice of jail or the Marines, I chose wrong. They gave me a hero’s burial and everyone was so proud of me. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/16/kevin-winterbaum
  • 30. 27. Sheila Springer Kevin Winterbaum was arrested for having drugs, for vandalism and mischief, and Judge Bolton let him join the army to pay off his debt. But he died. And nobody knew that the only reason Kevin was getting high and smashing mailboxes that night, was because he caught me with Gio Moss, and I screamed at him that I never wanted to see his face again. After he died I saw it every night of my life. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/sheila-springer
  • 31. 28. Eugene Conkin My family owned the I kept their organic orchard. My father taught crusade at bay until me how to run it, and I passed on. Then they made do whatever it took their changes anyway. to maximize yield, to preserve freshness, and to But maybe they were right. amplify color. I I’ve been buried here for gave my children stakes in years; the worms won’t touch the business, and we fought me. over the additives and fertilizers, the chemical sprays and the preservatives. They had this strange idea about how people wanted less colorful and shorter- lasting apples, and that they would pay more for them. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/eugene-conkin
  • 32. 29. Jamieson Hazeltone All I ever did was study for the tests at school. I always passed, always got A’s, but it wasn’t enough. The tests were weighted and it was possible to get a grade that was over one-hundred percent. So a perfect score was still not good enough, and they drilled it into us that our performance on the exams would determine the rest of our lives. In one way they were right. I was so frightened of not being good enough, all I did was work. And when the panic attacks started, I didn’t tell anybody because it would mean I’d have less time to study. The day that I was supposed to take the PSATs, I had an attack while walking to school, and fell in front of the bus. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/jamieson-hazeltone
  • 33. 30. Al Hazeltone When I was growing up, Spoon River was much smaller. My high school class was less than eighty, and I think most of us stayed here in the town. Unlike the later generations, who left as soon as they could. How many of my old school chums are here with me now? Life can be long. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/al-hazeltone
  • 34. 31. Doctor Jason Centrone Long after house calls had funeral and they become a relic, cried in memory I was known throughout the town of my infinite kindness as the one who could be and patience. But when I called on at any saw my Cassandra hour of the night. And the hiding at the edge of the people loved me for it. crowd of mourners, afraid But the truth was my to show in public wife was a harpy, my kids what we hid for so many were strangers, and my work years, all I could do then was the only thing was hate myself for that kept me from jumping from being a lying coward. the Deegan Bridge. Any excuse to get out of the house, I would take it. So, when I finally passed, the entire community came to my http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/doctor-jason-centrone
  • 35. 32. Officer Copeland We rotated with other squads, but I always loved the night shift. Sure, during the summer, when it was too hot to stay calm, it meant that there was a lot more crap to deal with. Shootings and stabbings almost every night. And of course drugs, always the drugs. But in the wintertime, most people would stay inside trying to keep warm. It was just too damn cold to make any trouble And it would be so quiet. Sometimes I would get out of my patrol car and walk the streets, like a beat cop of the old days. Every night is that quiet now. I could not be happier. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/officer-copeland
  • 36. 33. Hannah Ward Jimmy, it’s so clear to me now. Please don’t mourn for me anymore. My husband knew all about us, and he suffered as much agony as we did in trying to keep it secret from him. But give him this message from me. Tell him my love for you did not diminish my love for him. Love is not finite. The more it is shared, the more it creates. Go and love him for me. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/hannah-ward
  • 37. 34. Paul Robeson Law My father was Instead, I enjoyed my life. always going on and on So maybe about how I was too drunk I needed to to drive and killed myself by be responsible to the smashing head- family, on into that to our people, tree. But hey, at least I did to make something of myself. it myself. My life, it never belonged to me, it was always the property of someone else. I couldn’t go along with that. So I didn’t become a lawyer, a judge or a respected entrepreneur. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/paul-robeson-law
  • 38. 35. Shelly Leithouse As a kid, all that I and joy and life to this dreary town. listened to was classic rock. But when But the powers that be I went to the U.K. finally forced me to close down my for a study abroad year, I was Cathedral. Soon after exposed to so many I got sick, and to their glee I did different new sounds. And then my not recover. I don’t friends dragged know why I could never escape them. me to the festival And now I will lie here at Glastonbury, and I spent twelve forever where there is no music. blissful hours in the Experimental Sound Field. I walked away a changed person. I came back to Spoon River with my DJ boyfriend and tried to open a club. He took off soon thereafter, but I did not give up. I spent the next decade trying to bring music http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/20/shelly-leithouse
  • 39. 36. Christine Siegel I picked the fight with him that morning over nothing at all. He married me, even though I was pregnant with another man’s baby. I was scared that he was regretting it. He left for work, slamming doors behind him. I raided the medicine cabinet. I lay down in bed to read, but never got up. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/christine-siegel
  • 40. 37. Miguel Elliott I never listened to public service announcements that warned against riding in-between train cars. Then I lost my grip, and became the warning. I’m sorry, Mom. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/miguel-elliott
  • 41. 38. Scott DeMayo My folks would rarely let me out of the house. They were scared I would get caught up in the gangs that ran around our neighborhood. So I stayed in and was lonely. And none of it mattered when that stray bullet shattered through my bedroom window. I wish they would have let me out more. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/scott-demayo
  • 42. 39. Damien McCoy I knew all the kids at school whispered about me behind my back. I never caught them, but I knew for sure. If I tried to tell someone, they would look at me like I had gone crazy. So I did some reading and do you know what I found? I was crazy. Nobody would help me, they just told me to get over it. So I did, by swallowing a whole bottle of pills. And it worked. Now, no one talks about me. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/damien-mccoy
  • 43. 40. Taryn, the Dramatist In the schools of Spoon River, I learned the truth of how people were. Their petty grievances, their wolfpack mentality, their tiny codes that formed the basis of what they called “real life.” When I went out into the wider world, I saw everywhere else was basically the same. It was all a comedy of manners. Like my plays, my life, mere comedy. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/06/28/taryn-the-dramatist
  • 44. 41. The Sheriff I had been it at people - cops, criminals, a local football hero and citizens - then I joined and make them do my bidding. Then the Army. I came home to a one night I parade, and used that brass club to strike Russell rumors that I had a dozen Diedrich, and kills. I was he shot me dead. The powers that recruited into the police, were did all force and they they could to have Diedrich sent to put me on the fast track, until death row. But I became they failed, because I haunted the the youngest Sheriff in the town’s dreams of the history. jury foreman and told him that They wanted an energetic, what I got they said a was just punishment for my crimes. charismatic, force for law and order. It apparently was a plus that I was the meanest son of a bitch in town. I had a nightstick made of solid brass and I would wave http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/the-sheriff
  • 45. 42. Russell Diedrich I was driving home from a had my case was a close friend party one night, and the sheriff of Christian Deegan, who had made pulled me over. I hadn’t Logan the Sheriff in the been doing anything wrong, but first place, so I knew it would be he put me face down on the the chair. But Kerns cut a deal pavement anyway. He searched my to stop his investigation car without probable cause, into Deegan’s stock fraud and and found the remains of a joint. manipulation, in exchange for giving me a shortened He screamed at me, then pulled out prison sentence. They gave me a his awful nightstick and beat me thirty-year stretch, but I was with it. I scrabbled back to let out after fourteen of them. my car. He’d stopped his search when he found the pot, so hadn’t found While I was on the inside, the gun. He swung the stick at my I taught myself how to play chess. head, and I shot him in the There was a program where you neck. He fell to the pavement and could play correspondence matches I ran away while he bled against professionals and to death. When I turned myself in, ranked experts. One time, I fought an the guards beat on me without International Master mercy, until my attorney until he offered me a draw. Kyle Kerns was able to have me transferred. But the Judge who http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/russell-diedrich
  • 46. 43. Benton Woods My service was during the short lull between Japan and Korea, so I never saw a real battle. But I preached my example to my sons, and they both went to Vietnam, but never came home. Now there are no more Woods. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/benton-woods
  • 47. 44. Beverly Domino I tried not to lie, and so They made me an outcast. I saw greed and did not call it charity. I saw ugliness and did not call it beautiful. I saw ambition and did not call it service. And I saw brainwashing and did not call it an education. For my candor, I was shunned, hated. But it did not matter to me. My inside and outside were conformed. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/06/beverly-domino
  • 48. 45. James MacDonald Waring It was ironic, no? That the money I made from my investments in the Trust allowed me to fund the town’s arts and humanities, and provide a platform for Deegan’s enemies. Like the theater, symphony, my wife’s foundation. And that the collapse of that same Trust ruined me and silenced all those voices. While Deegan went all but untouched. If I did not know better, I’d think that he planned it all this way. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/james-macdonald-waring
  • 49. 46. Shaun Bolton The embarrassments, smile to my face. the mundane injuries Now there’s simply nothing. and the insults of daily life were always too much for me. My skin, always thin, never hardened. And one day, my wife complaining how I burned the chicken again was all I could take, so I opened the window and jumped out. But even here, there is no rest. No rest, and no freedom to change. When I was alive, at least there were a few things that brought a fleeting http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/shaun-bolton
  • 50. 47. Ruth Middleton-Ross All throughout school, time to follow my own ambitions. they told me I was special. Brilliant, But the drugs they gifted, destined gave me to keep for some greatness. my moods under control prevented A leader of tomorrow. But I me from thinking got out into clearly, and when the big world and I tried to stop taking them, my dear nobody cared. The only jobs I husband had me could get were as committed. When secretary, I followed their rules, they called me a waitress, model or prostitute. Then success. Somehow, a rich man took I was never a fancy to successful enough to be allowed me and proposed marriage. It was just my liberty. another kind of job, blending all the others. But I hoped that the trade off would give me money and http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/ruth-middleton-ross
  • 51. 48. Alexander Flagg I spent years organizing protests against the War in Vietnam. Later I became an entrepreneur and made a killing. When they started up another war, I tried to make my voice heard in the great debate. But I had too many friends in the differing camps, so neither side would trust me. Pick your side and stay with it no matter what. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/alexander-flagg
  • 52. 49. Dr. Gregory Vreeland Doctors keep selling them. Then the deaths are supposed to be public started, and I went to prison servants, priests and saviors. But we for the also rest of my life. At least my have to make money. And woe creditors couldn’t reach me there. to anyone who tries to do one at the expense of the other. I was just trying to help my patients. At first, I was as convinced as my clients that my weight-loss products really worked. By the time I was able to admit that they didn’t, I was so far into debt that I didn’t have any choice but to http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/15/dr-gregory-vreeland
  • 53. 50. Robb Chess You won’t believe was all a game. what I say, but all that money that All games can be gamed. you worry your lives over, it’s all imaginary. And your morals are just handicaps beaten in to you by all of your competitors. Nobody has your interests in mind except for you. I built and lost fortunes a dozen times over, and was unconcerned. It http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/robb-chess
  • 54. 51. Claire Battaglia My mother was always sick, and I was born blind. All my life people pitied me. But what they did not see that in taking away my sight, the Lord gave me the gift of patience. As the pace of world made all those around me sick and unhappy, I built a life and a home and a family that was an oasis of calm. My husband Dom fought crippling fears all his life, until I helped him find peace. In a world devoted to breaking people, my children grew up strong, whole and unbent. I lived a life full of light and color. I have no complaints. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/claire-battaglia
  • 55. 52. Judge Welington Bolton I was renowned for having the largest personal law library in three states. Judges and lawyers from all over the country would ask to borrow my volumes. I even loaned one to Justice Stewart once. I guess it was fitting then, that when there was that giant explosion at the shopping mall they were building down the street from the courthouse, that my bookshelves would crush me to death. The law giveth and taketh. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/judge-welington-bolton
  • 56. 53. Clarence Brusso When I married her, I thought the not imagine saying urges would go away. the words to my blind little girl. But they never did, and I was Then one day, I didn’t forced to sneak out, to make just hear Jesus. I saw him in excuses, to pretend I was front of me. Then I was working and not at the out of time to tell anything baths. Then she became ill and I to any one at all. stayed close to home taking care of her. Which is how we made our poor little girl. And years later, when the men in my secret fellowship all began dying horrible deaths, I began to hear the voice of Jesus, urging me to confess what I had done. I was going to. I wanted to. I just kept putting it off and delaying. I could http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/clarence-brusso
  • 57. 54. Kharyn Green When I grew my breasts, I secretly they were asked my parents what free to do. Their scorn set they meant. But they wouldn’t me on my path. Had explain. I asked my they answered my questions teachers, and they told me truthfully in the to keep quiet. I first place, maybe things would asked my friends and they laughed have been different. at me. So I went to find out myself. And I learned. I learned a lot. From boys and girls my own age and from men like Giovanni Moss, who people thought was taking advantage of me. But the truth was that they sneered at me and called me a slut for doing what they all wished http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/kharyn-green
  • 58. 55. Giovanni Moss I was never the best looking watching the young man in the room. nurses laugh at me. I wonder But I knew how to dress, and how if things would have to stand in the been different had I taken right light, how to speak to women less, given more. with just the right tone. How to walk into a room and make every head turn. How to smile at the married men while taking their wives and daughters. Most importantly, how to take what I wanted and get out with a minimum of fuss. The mistake I made was that I grew old. And I ended up living alone in a shabby nursing home, and http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/24/giovanni-moss
  • 59. 56. Hans Bluff I was always Broderick Deegan’s chasing Kharyn Green, real estate firm. hoping she would The week after I let me in. But for made VP, the some reason, she Galleria burned, always told me no. the company When I saw her collapsed, and I lost with Giovanni everything. I Moss, I was so realized that I embarrassed, that I had traded the decided in chase of one hussy that instant that I for another, would stop spending and neither wanted time on frivolous anything to pursuits and I do with me. Some guys threw myself into were just born to my schoolwork. I be losers, I guess. went to business school, and later used my inheritance http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/25/hans-bluff to buy in to
  • 60. 57. Andrew Cairns They always told me that my dream of playing pro ball was impossible, so I left this town as soon as I was able. I never made it to the majors, but I was good enough to pitch in Mexico and Taiwan for many years. But then the gamblers threatened me, and when I told them to shove it, they shot me down. When I came here, I was consoled by an ancient roman ghost named Martius. He said I had earned much more than I had received. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/07/25/andrew-cairns
  • 61. 58. Darryl Cordova My father owned the shop, shop before reaching sixty. and I spent most of my youth working in it. Then he passed it on to me and I spent all of my days and nights there. I somehow found time to get a wife and have some children, and they also became entwined in the life of the shop. I never took a day off, never had a vacation, and I never closed except on Christmas day. Someone once asked me what I would do when I got to retirement age. I didn’t have an answer. Turned out I didn’t need one. I died at the http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/darryl-cordova
  • 62. 59. Gwendolyn Yates They told me I didn’t have a work call me a failure. ethic, because I But I had more joy than all of them, didn’t want to spend my life in an combined, ever had. office or a school. I always asked them who invented work in the first place? What a funny custom, to waste your precious time doing something for another’s benefit, while you get scraps of paper in return. I preferred to sing. You don’t need good credit to sing, don’t need a mortgage. Don’t need anyone’s good opinion, neither. Don’t even need much in the way of food, clothing or shelter, since you can get all of them through singing. So many of them would http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/gwendolyn-yates
  • 63. 60. Helene Duluca We were both thirteen, but when they caught us they all blamed Charlie and told me he forced himself on me. And so I wouldn’t get in trouble, I agreed. That was how I learned that sex was bad and I could never let it be found out that I liked it. So I spent years taking it secretly, with strangers in bars and offices and shops. Until one night, I picked the wrong man, and he sent me to this place. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/helene-deluca
  • 64. 61. Rabbi Stern Everyone thought me to be wise, and they were heartbroken at my wasting illness. The temple rallied around me and kept me warm, loved during my slow descent. None of them ever found out that my disease was a secret taste for heroin, a habit that took two decades to kill me. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/rabbi-stern
  • 65. 62. Rita Chavez I knew I was the second choice, and I was overjoyed when my rival left. Then Pedro belonged to me. But many years later, Carmen came back, and I lost him. It took two years for him to get up the courage to leave me, but my soul died that very first day. And my love for him turned to hatred, as I vowed to never let him out of my grasp. I wonder what would have happened if I had just set him free. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/rita-chavez
  • 66. 63. Pedro Teves Poor Rita, I swear I was never free I never wanted of knowing what I to hurt you. But we had done to you. I both knew I always could never forget loved Carmen, and as much as I tried to put it out of my mind, we were meant to be. I wish it had not been so. I wish it was us who were supposed to have been together. That way, I would not have had to cause you so much pain. And even though my life with Carmen was everything I had ever wanted, http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/pedro-teves
  • 67. 64. Wayne Garcia I had so many opportunities, and I let each of them pass by. For good reasons, I believed. They were risky, they were too hard, they would cost too much of myself. So I stayed home, and stayed safe. Now look at me. I ended up here anyway, with nothing to show for it. The riskiest thing is to do nothing. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/04/wayne-garcia
  • 68. 65. Spencer Chadwick They said I was crazy, a man of seventy, marrying a girl of thirty-five. They said she was after my money. Well, it was money I had, and companionship I lacked. I did not care that she was bought. My long years in finance taught me that everybody is bought and sold, and everybody buys and sells themselves. So I had a few years with her and she got all of my money after I was gone. So what? It’s not as if I can use any of it here. And I’d rather she had it than my lying children. Whores are the only honest ones. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/05/spencer-chadwick
  • 69. 66. Gary, the Pilot All my life, all I wanted was to break the bonds of gravity. To ascend higher and higher into the sky. But we are all tethered, Earth-bound. One day, we will escape and take our place on high. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/gary-the-pilot
  • 70. 67. Ng the Salesman All things been such a are business cancer on the town if Shelly propositions. Would we expend Leithouse so much paid into money and that same racket? Would the never- material and lives in the ending Middle drug war have East, if they any point other than a tool didn’t have oil we needed? for our And if leaders to Daisey Kane’s restrict the same rights and freedoms damned trade was so injurious that brought to the me to this welfare of country? It’s not conspiracy the public, wouldn’t the powers- if it’s that-be policy shut her down, and happens out in the open. regardless of how much money she paid them for their http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/ng-the-salesman protection? Would the Sanctuary
  • 71. 68. Mayor Ellen Garrity My good friends. I hoped that my lifetime of service would be valued. That you would look kindly on my attempts to save you from the crime and drugs and obscenities that are a constant threat to our way of life if we do not remain vigilant. If you valued my sacrifice, then you would stop that slut Maggie Garzan and that idiot Ridley boy from defiling my grave with their lustful coupling almost every night! http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/mayor-ellen-garrity
  • 72. 69. Miles Kagan I paid for many town. I never believed campaigns, and helped to make in anything or the Mayor’s Office in anyone again. like your own home. But more than that, you were the fixed point on my compass, the mother from whom I needed approval for each endeavor. But when I finally got close up and saw how the sausage was made, that the face you showed to the world was a mask that hid your spite and venality and your arrogance, my heart was broken. I quit the party and quit the http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/miles-kagan
  • 73. 70. Ron and Leo While alive, we were not allowed to live truly openly together. Were never permitted to show our love to the town or the world. But now we are here together, forever. And what you think matters not one bit. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/ron-and-leo
  • 74. 71. Margaret Garzan After Micah Ridley left town a brain, but gorgeous to without me, I swore I’d look at. He flattered me with his never put my fate in the hands attention until I of a man again. So foolishly agreed to marry when I finally moved to the him. I should have seen that city, I turned myself he’d do to me what I’d done to into a woman who needed my husband. And now I’m nobody and took what back in Spoon River. Our fates are she wanted. I socialized my never fully our own. way up the ranks of the elite and married a wealthy lawyer. He was fun when he was drunk. After about a year, he died suddenly, and I inherited it all. I moved to Rome and spent the money for a living. I took a lover, a man ten years my junior. Not much of http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/margaret-garzan
  • 75. 72. Mrs. Sofia Garzan I designed legislation than lingerie for a to simply talk with them? living. So when my girl Maggie got Didn’t all her reputation, of their desperate of course the town whispered attempts to “rescue the that it was family” my fault. And when the end up destroying kids followed a fad where the family instead? underthings were worn openly, of course the answer was to picket my shop and brand me as anti-family. Were they so scared of their children that it was easier to enact http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/mrs-sofia-garzan
  • 76. 73. Judge Sy Goldberg When I was alive, tilted I would from the start. The fairness that I sit on the bench, listen to the prided myself on petitioners in was just front of the self-reinforcing bias me, and I prided myself on of a system built being fair, treating to crush. the poor I should have been their advocate. the same as the wealthy. But now, Instead I handed buried here, I can the axe listen to the headsman. I sent Lukasz to the curses from the many Harding to Death Row. whom I sent here, I But I can hear was a hundred times more guilty. what the prosecutors could keep from the record, I can see the truth. The poor were not equal at my bar. The field http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/judge-sy-goldberg
  • 77. 74. Busker Barney I was playing for coins great musicians that I’m at the Courthouse Bus Stop. never at a loss for It had been a long day; somebody to jam with. I’d made very little. When Russell Diedrich and Dutch Wallis came along, high on something, they gave me twenty dollars to play “Gloria” while they bellowed along. When a policeman started towards us to stop their racket, they ran away, pushing me towards the cop to slow him down. I tripped and fell into the street, right in the path of the number 7 bus. Now I’m here, where there are so many http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/busker-barney
  • 78. 75. The Salaryman When I was of the firm, with a family and ten, my folks gave me a super-8 a mortgage, camera, and no more time left. So I gave up and I fell in love with making films. my dreams. But In college, by the time I passed on and was sent I won a prize at a festival here, I had and I moved made enough money and knew enough to the city to break in to the people so industry. that my kids could work those entry jobs But all the entry-level jobs were for free. Each held by the generation gets a bit further. children of the rich and connected who could work for no money. I took an office job and tried to work around it. Before I knew it, twenty years had passed, and I’d become the vice- president http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/12/the-salaryman
  • 79. 76. Alexandra Austen That house was the cause of all of our strife. He inherited it from his mother, and all his siblings were jealous and never forgave him. Then all the property tax increase forced us to sacrifice everything to keep paying for it. And no matter how much I tried to convince him that we needed to just leave it behind and start over somewhere new, he never could see how to extricate himself. So one night, after we fought about money and our future, I torched the awful place. Burned the fucking thing to the ground. He divorced me, and sued me But he never understood that I did it to set him free. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/alexandra-austen
  • 80. 77. Glenn Austen It was a little and his desire to a standoff, and I tried bit after my sister cover it up. Saw to provoke the cops Alexandra was the gruesome photos of into doing the job arrested for arson how he tried. And as for me, but they were that I got chosen I listened, I despaired, remarkably restrained. for jury duty. I because I saw that I don’t know why. It tried to get excused no matter how much you took four years of trials by telling them about love at the start, it and appeals before her, but the judge was always turns to hatred. they killed me anyway. unmoved. They selected I would have saved them me to serve on the We found him guilty, the time and the trouble. murder trial of that and that night I went home dentist, Doctor Stahl to my pregnant wife for killing his patient and shot her in the head. Zadie-Mae Lemmons. If the boys had been Each day we sat there and home I would have killed them heard evidence of too. As it was, when their tawdry affair, of I tried to shoot myself, how she got pregnant, the gun jammed. There was http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/glenn-austen
  • 81. 78. D.A. Antonio Jackson My life and healthy. And I learned that was devoted to bringing morality cannot be justice, to punishing the divorced wicked, from chemistry. I think of and upholding the standards all those I damned to prison of the community. My or worse, finest and I recall the triumph hour was when I sent the I felt when Austen went to murderer Glenn Austen to the chair. death row. I wonder if anything But my son was diagnosed with schizophrenia, so I did helped anyone. I I quit doubt it. my office as the District My son was just another Attorney and devoted big case that I had to win. myself to his care. I studied the working of the human brain, damaged http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/da-antonio-jackson
  • 82. 79. Jonathan Mellor I studied all the great word men, Bruce, Carlin, Hicks. Did you know that as part of his act, Mort Sahl used to just read the Warren Commission report? These were my heroes, the comics who made people laugh while forcing their eyes open even if it meant insulting and enraging them. I was good at that part of the gig. Leaving some no-name club in some flyspeck town, somebody – I never saw who – hit me in the head with a cement brick. I never woke up. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/jonathan-mellor
  • 83. 80. Johan Torres I was born with a defective valve in my heart, so my life was contained, limited, and measured in tiny doses. But that once with Isabel under the infinite stars, I gave her everything I had. It cost me, but I have no regrets. Brevity is not lack. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/johan-torres
  • 84. 81. LoydPahk When I had the stroke, I was still waiting for my promotion to Director to go through. It was going to make it all better. Didn’t even want that damn job. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/22/loyd-pahk
  • 85. 82. Park Shin Min My tiny town a one-way plane from that thought. outside Wonju ticket to When the cancer so stifled America. came, I forbade me, I left as And who should be Patty from soon as I could. in the seat sending me back I worked in next to mine, but to Korea. the clubs near the old Sergeant Pat, This is home. American who I knew bases. I quite well from the waltzed with Majors old days. We struck and traded shots a deal and with Privates. I lived with him But I always in Spoon River. knew it was a For more than short-term gig, twenty years, they and I saved my all believed we money. At age were married. thirty-six, We did nothing I bought myself to dissuade them http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/park-shin-min
  • 86. 83. Matthew Twombley I got Doctor Centrone to give me Viagra, but didn’t tell him about the heart meds I’d gotten from Doctor Golden. I wanted to be able to give Saskia everything, especially after the pain of her first two marriages. She deserved it all, and I deserved to finally live, no matter how my complaining children tried to persuade me that I didn’t belong with a woman thirty years my junior. What they never understood was that she asked me for nothing. So I gave her everything I had without reservation. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/matthew-twombley
  • 87. 84. Alejandro Mejias The confusion does not surprise me. Very few actual remains were recovered from the pit, so how were they supposed to know that the investment banker Nathaniel Terrel is not entombed here, just parts of me, a minimum-wage busboy. I wonder if they sent his ashes to my family in Guatemala. Or if we are both scattered across the world. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/nathaniel-terrel
  • 88. 85. A Powerful Lawyer I I kept even the smallest claim counted myself among the most from reaching my clients. prosperous attorneys When in I died, there were memorials the state. I spoke for the mighty: and tributes, and a front the Second Spoon River page Bank, obituary. Now, I lie Development Authority here, and I can feel all Partners, and Limited the Re, insects scuttling across my who insured the Galleria. I knew all the pressure dead skin, every maggot points, that where to apply the leverage, squirms to life from gnawing on my how to make things happen. desiccated remains. I never lost a case. They rarely even made it into court. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/a-powerful-lawyer
  • 89. 86. Kathy Folds You stayed with me through all the chemo, the radiation, the surgeries. Ten years of hacking pieces of your wife away. And you tried to stay strong for me. But I saw you shriveling. When the cancer came back to eat at me, and I saw I would never again be the woman that you married, I let you go. I let me go. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/25/kathy-folds
  • 90. 87. Joanie the Musician I had to learn to use my sorrow, to turn it into my music. I wrote songs about the sadness my entire life. And now I can’t believe all the things that I didn’t see, all the joy I turned away from. What I was feeling, it wasn’t despair. This, this here, is despair. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/28/joanie-the-musician
  • 91. 88. Mrs. Schneider I dreamed of divorcing him. But I stayed. For the children. That’s what Judge Goldhamer advised him. And I got the same sermon from Reverend Halty. Marriage is sacred. So I stayed. For the children. But feelings can never be totally repressed. So we raised them in a home full of poison and misery. They grew to hate us both equally and fled as soon as they could. I don’t really blame them. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/28/mrs-schneider
  • 92. 89. Mrs. Mitzi Schultz Sometimes, the program again and only thing that helped again, and the idea that me get through it was my set there is an of tapes of ultimate justice. the old Twilight Zone. I prayed for that justice to My husband had nothing to fall on those do with how who stole him and the Deegan’s investment life we had planned. I still pray. bank collapsed. But he had a big title and no true friends, so he took the fall. He went to prison and left me alone to raise our children. I did my part, and they grew up the best they could. What kept me going was watching that http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/29/mrs-mitzi-schultz
  • 93. 90. Rev. Clay Halty Of all my saw their children, accomplishments and their calm, quiet in the decades I preached in Spoon River, of all the sermons and the conversions and retreats, the one thing I’m most proud of is how I was able to keep the Schneiders, with God’s help, from succumbing to the secular temptation to rip their whole family apart. Each time I http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/29/rev-clay-halty
  • 94. 91. Allan Bivans I spent most of my was the most valued life struggling for the substance in the world. And control over my I imagined two family’s chain of gas Silk Road-trading brothers stations. My brother locked in a never- resented me because ending feud over their our father sent me salt, and how silly to college, while he had that would look to modern to stay home and work folks. At that moment, the business. When Dad died I decided to sell and left it all to him my half of the us, he did everything business. I was on my he could to force me way to tell him, and out and make my life Hell. imagining how I Every day was filled would use the proceeds with arguments about to start a whole new life oil and gasoline. for myself far from One day, I was in a here, when I had the stroke. restaurant, looking at the salt shakers on all the tables, and http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/08/29/allan-bivans recalling that once, salt
  • 95. 92. Rev. Jeremy Sheaffer After I passed, the Church auctioned off my effects as a fundraiser. It was my idea, to let each of them have a tiny piece of their shepherd for a memorial, as he departed for a distant, better land. But that didn’t mean I wanted my filing cabinets bought by Bob Clemmond, who everyone knew was the town’s worst drug dealer. He dumped all of my papers at the recycling plant. The Almighty only knows what disgusting poisons he displaced all my sermons with. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/rev-jeremy-sheaffer
  • 96. 93. Roosevelt Feinstein I fought them all of my days. For rights for all. For freedom of conscience, for freedom of choice, for freedom from fear. But long years in the State House tend to blur the factions in the eyes of the people. And you can’t win every fight. So when I won, I was “just doing what I was supposed to do." When I compromised, I was “complicit with evil.” And when I was beaten, I was “pathetic.” By the end, my once- loud voice had been diminished to a whisper. Oh, they gave me an ornate funeral with grand remembrances. But during the eulogy, I know my unwrinkled successors cut deals and traded horses in the cloak room. I hope they fare better than I did. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/roosevelt-feinstein
  • 97. 94. Judge Terence Visser All those liberal lions, Kerns and Feinstein and O’Meara, they loved to laugh at me, and judge me for my aspirations. For some reason, they felt I was not worthy to stand in their company. How much did they regret their snobbery, when my years as Deegan’s counsel led to a seat on the Bench? How much did they have to swallow their jokes and plaster fake smiles on their faces when making a petition to My Court? Oh, how I made them pay. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/judge-terence-visser
  • 98. 95. Kelvin Platt Thom Kerns always complained failures. I had no how ashamed he was identity of my that his children never own. That’s why I ran amounted to much. for the seat on the School He never understood Board. I spent all my that I had it so money, but I still lost. much worse. My children were My kids wanted to successful beyond support me after that. anyone’s reckoning. I would not let them. They all left me, to I pushed them away. My go to New York, Paris, end came soon after. Kuala Lumpur, Berlin, and God knows where else. They rarely came home. And all anyone asked me was about them. Every success they had made me that much more ashamed of my own http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/kelvin-platt
  • 99. 96. Thom Kerns I never quite got why Kelvin Platt was always so miserable when folks asked about his amazing kids. I’d have given almost anything to have just one of mine become so luminous. In and out of jail. On and off of drugs. They were disgraceful and disgusting. Shame, or the drinking that covered it – not sure which killed me. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/thom-kerns
  • 100. 97. Christine Novell They never knew what to call the thing, whatever it was I had. Lupus, Lyme, Epstein-Barr, Fibro, CFS, Depression, allergies, and on and on. Or worse, it was all in my head, and no insurance code applied. Every year, a new drug that was supposed to work, which only made it worse. Never a moment without pain that didn’t feel wrong, artificial, not me. But now there is no more pain and I’m finally at peace. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/christine-novell
  • 101. 98. Ikrimahibn Khalid They were always making fun of the way I dressed and the way I prayed. Always trying to convert me. After, they looked at me full of suspicion and hatred. Or with fear, as if I would detonate myself at any minute. I tried to show them the truth of my people and our history. Then, Willy Halty, the Minister’s son, beat me to death with a baseball bat. Peace be unto you all. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/ikrimah-ibn-khalid
  • 102. 99. Simon Leigh Goldhamer People say they like shun, reject, deny the truth. But the truth that it even could be possible. is they really prefer a story. Story is the world And if the story The world is story. isn’t the truth, they’ll We can’t see differently, and believe transform that story into the truth. fairy tales. Like the Holy Trinity But it goes further of the Beginning, Middle and End. than that. Truth only becomes capable of being seen, recognized as the truth, if it can be seen in the outline of a story. And we’ve become so that if it does not fit into the story, we cannot even see it. We http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/11/simon-leigh-goldhamer
  • 103. 100. Moreland, the Columnist I got fired from the paper for doing the same thing that got me lauded in the first place. I would talk to the powerful and write about them. But I did not take dictation. I tried to show them as they truly were. They usually didn’t like it. But it was more than a fair trade for their dominion over us, I thought. But I crossed the line when I wrote my profile of Judge Goldhamer. He was not pleased. Somebody called someone, and soon I was out of a job. But nobody said I didn’t get the story right. I take that to my grave and you bet it keeps me warm. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/23/moreland-the-columnist
  • 104. 101. Harmonie Fisher Life was a competition. For me to succeed others had to fail. So I made damn sure they would. I undermined confidence, ruined plans, spoiled hopes, and bent those around me to do what I wanted. When they broke, I discard them and simply found others I could manipulate. But eventually, I ran out of people and I ran out of time. In the end I was alone. If you prevail in a competition and the losers are not there to see it, then the victory is empty and meaningless. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/23/harmonie-fisher
  • 105. 102. Christian Deegan So, everybody hated and feared me, you say? What of it? While the so-called moralists and the righteous and the preening intellectuals bleated about meaning and justice and truth, I laughed at them. The only truth, the only meaning, is influence. It’s the first law of the universe. How do you move a thing that will not move? I spent a life collecting and using influence to make the world in my image. Lesser people complained and judged, but they were merely too cowardly to take that power for themselves. They can’t touch me. Never could. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/09/23/christian-deegan
  • 106. 103. MaureeneTringo After years of work, reams of forms, defend my new homeland. and waiting and waiting, I finally qualified to I wonder if anybody be an American made Deegan swear that oath. citizen. I went in to the city that day to take part in a special swearing-in ceremony, led by the Attorney General of the whole country! And I almost missed it. I couldn’t get to the courthouse, because the road was blocked for some bigwigs. (Later, I found out it was Christian Deegan, being freed from some tax burden.) But in spite of that huge motorcade, I got there in time to take my oath to serve, protect and http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/maureene-tringo
  • 107. 104. Thomas Winter We were one of the first died in an accident. families, founders of Hank overdosed on pills Spoon River. My great-great- after his great disgrace. grandfather built our house. Sally’s husband beat her Generations of the until she became a Winters came from that home, ghost of herself. Philip to write our name across contracted a syndrome, the world. Until I failed undiagnosable them all. I did every and incurable. And thing I was supposed to – Maria just gave up sent my children to the for some reason no one best schools, secured for them ever learned. All of them prestigious jobs and well- broken by life. While I bred partners. I followed succeeded at every the plan. I grew richer goal, but preserving the and more influential. family legacy. But James embezzled and fled overseas. Janie http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/thomas-winter
  • 108. 105. Phillip Thomas Winter I was in and out of all not answer no. So I the best hospitals, and redoubled my efforts. all the advanced clinics, I demanded my father while father spent his money treat her like a daughter. trying to make me well. But then I died, and I I had a theory that don’t know if he did or if the nurses at these places she just moved on. I wish, were all selected for Sienna. Oh, I wish. their allure, so as to seduce a patient into getting well. It never worked. Until I came home, and they hired Sienna. She was not pretty. But she was beautiful. How I wanted to get well for her. The harder I tried the worse it got. I asked her to marry me. She did http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/phillip-thomas-winter
  • 109. 106. Maria Winter When you lose your soul- mate, you lose a piece of yourself. And when your soul-mate turns their back on you, the little bit of you that remains is poisoned. They thought I gave up and hid from the world. But really I was trying to drive the poison out, purge and rebuild myself. I was almost able to. If I’d had five more years, maybe I would have. But I ran out of time. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/maria-winter
  • 110. 107. Paul Welch I’m so sorry good enough for you Maria. I did again. I’m so not meant it to ashamed, Maria. happen like it did. You deserved so But life in the much better than me. city was strange and complicated. And I feared that Spoon River would make me feel trapped and bored. I was far from bored in the city, even before Rachel LeDoux found me. But once I was with her, I was trapped anyway, and I knew that I could never be http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/paul-welch
  • 111. 108. Rachel LeDoux The funny thing is, I I lost him, and with him never even liked sex my best candidate for all that much. But every security. After body else did, so it there was just a string of gave me power over diminishing prospects. them. I tormented my stepfather, until I was thrown out of the house. I was still learning and refining. I moved to the city, where I plowed through a list of lovers, men and women, each one dancing to my tune. Paul Welch was my best score; I thought I might even make him marry me. But then one of my exes warned him about my past, so http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/rachel-ledoux
  • 112. 109. Anya Kirillov I came here from things to placate her wrath. So we Poland when I was a girl, and both stayed out of got work as a sight until the baby came. Then domestic in the White home. One they quietly day, when Mrs. sent me to work somewhere else. Years White was out, Mr. White trapped me later, I found in the kitchen. DolphKirilov, and we built our I kept quiet, afraid they would own family. send me back to And it was sweet. But whenever Poland. But soon I began to people saw me show. And Mrs. crying at the eloquence of White came to me. I thought she would one of Benson kill me. But she White’s speeches, they had no idea had a plan. They had no children that inside I of their own, so was screaming that he was my son. she would take the baby and claim that it was hers. I’m sure that Mr. White gave her many other http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/anya-kirillov
  • 113. 110. Benson White All that I achieved – Judge, Congressman, and a Candidate for the State House – was possible only because of the inheritance I received from my parents, Thomas and Gail White. From my father, I got my morals, ethics, and sense of duty. From my mother, I learned how to take all of life in stride, and rejoice even in the parts that seemed to be setbacks. Everything that I was, was because of them. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/01/benson-white
  • 114. 111. Gil Tam I always believed there argued that was no such religion thing as an and God were afterlife. just fictions. So I’m not Stories used sure what this to explain is right here, things beyond where I am. our ken. It But I am did not make willing to me the most entertain popular theories on man in Spoon it without River, a bowing down town that was and giving quite pious. praise to the But I stuck Christian god. to my guns. I also http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/03/gil-tam
  • 115. 112. Steve Biscoe Gil and I loved to argue religion. He was a wonderful fellow and a hopeless secularist. When my cancer was in its final stages, he would visit me often, and I looked forward to those more than any perfunctory drop- in by the folks who just felt obligated. The last thing I said to him before I died was that I looked forward to settling the question once and for all. But wouldn’t you know it, he’s still not convinced. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/03/steve-biscoe
  • 116. 113. Laurent Arno I knew she cheated on me. A Minister cannot divorce his wife and expect to keep his position. So I bore it. Even as I took on more outside work. I wrote books on how to live a Godly life. None of them did too well, as if people could intuit that I was lying. I prayed for one of them to succeed, so I could afford to abandon the Ministry and divorce her. I never did. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/laurent-arno
  • 117. 114. Imogene Arno-Niles I kept my secrets in life. I’ll keep them in death. There is nothing I can say to you that you could possibly understand. Move on. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/imogene-arno-niles
  • 118. 115. Eugene Blantz I entered politics to make things better. But after all the years, all the deals, all the goddamned compromises it took before I finally won election to the State Legislature, I don’t think that I had the faintest notion what was right anymore. So I sold my vote on the big eminent domain bill that favored the Deegan Trust, and naturally I got caught and went to jail. I wish I had stuck to being a shoe salesman. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/eugene-blantz
  • 119. 116. Lonnie Marchetti A fuck-up like me, a man who had wasted decades on drugs and booze, who had cut a swath of destruction through lives in three states; it’s ironic that such a wretch could come out the other side of his Trial and be able to lead a ministry for the fallen. I had replaced the ecstasy of meth with the bliss of Jesus. He saved me in every sense of the word. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/lonnie-marchetti
  • 120. 117. Sheri O’Brien You may have gone far away from here, and had a life rich with sights and experiences that far outstripped what I had in my short time. But you know at your core, that it will never be enough, it will never make amends, it will never make you forget that you have it all because of what you stole from me. But still, even though I’m gone too early, my time was more truly alive than your glamorous lie. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/06/sheri-o'brien
  • 121. 118. “Big Ed” Thag I guess there’s to live always in a town where been two kinds of those folks were folks, the ones the ones who see in charge. But, I things how they are, have a hunch and the ones that if who see the other team them as they think had been in they ought to control, be. I they woulda not had struggles a lot. treated me I gotta all that say that much different. most of them were caused by the second type. Guess I had the bad luck http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/big-ed-thag
  • 122. 119. MireleBulinski Tell me – if you could do it all over again, start over from the beginning, with a clean slate, would you? Neither would I. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/mirelle-bulinski
  • 123. 120. The Anonymous He was rich. He was powerful. He took what he wanted from me and discarded the emptied husk. Then his men tidied up and dumped me in the woods. The moment he saw me, I didn’t stand a chance. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/the-anonymous
  • 124. 121. Joel Addams Loxley I know it’s not lofty heights, acquired popular opinion, baggage and beholders, and it flies in the face creditors and of the myth of compromises. And yet America. But you most would say he was the must admit that, being better choice to born wealthy and hold the power. But be with needs fulfilled, I was careful what leaders you able to study the wish for. At least intricacies the independently of public policy wealthy can be stolid, and government and turn dispassionate myself into in their government. Their an exemplary, true, bread's already buttered. servant of the people. Whereas my chief rival DekeStayn, on his long climb through the ranks to ascend to his http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/18/joel-addams-loxley
  • 125. 122. DekeStayn Breeding and an education are nice, but I’ll take a worker that’s made his own way in the world. I started sweeping up a factory floor, and by the end, there was nobody in America who would not listen to what I said. Power earned, twice as strong as power inherited. The one avenue to true liberty. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/deke-stayn
  • 126. 123. Pierce Leithouse People think it was the way the town leaders demonized my daughter that led me to defect to the other party and lead them to drive out my former friends. And it’s true that the switch happened then. But more than pride or fatherly protectiveness was behind it. It struck me, suddenly, that people who crave power over others in the name of security and order, are truly just interested in power for its own sake. And that power, once ceded, can never be reclaimed. And I saw my part in constructing an architecture of coercion. I felt called upon to repent and make amends. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/pierce-leithouse
  • 127. 124. Howard, the Station Boss Everybody clamors secure. I knew for the truth. enough to bring them all I could give it to you in down. But why any way you in the world would I? Besides, pleased. We liked to deride none of you want those who claimed to know where the bodies truth was purely subjective are buried. as being French And democracy is just Communists. But really, for schoolchildren. they were our best friends. My job was to manufacture truth, to serve whoever was pulling the strings. If the Mayor stayed in office, if Deegan’s profits stayed fat, and if my ratings remained high, I was http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/howard,-the-station-boss
  • 128. 125. Maryann Stillson I ran my laundry for most of my days. I cleaned clothes for all kinds of people. Rich and poor, liberal and conservative, the influential and the invisible. They all had sweat stains, brown streaks, stink. Don’t care who you were. Only the dead are clean. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/maryann-stillson
  • 129. 126. Doug Linke All I said was national pride be that American self-evident? policy had And if you have to something to do with bellow it and it, some measure enforce it through fear of blame. A fairly and coercion, innocuous isn’t it worthless? statement, and one that many learned people would agree with behind closed doors. But I said it out loud, on the air, so they destroyed my career and slandered my name. All in the name of patriotism. But shouldn’t that http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/doug-linke
  • 130. 127. Philip Dent My lifetime belonged to and flattering Christian Deegan. his vanity. I had I gave his bank my time, no time left to eleven, twelve, build my own life. Which is thirteen hours every why I chose the day, six days a front of his office to week. And on Sundays, I shoot myself in went to his church the head. Hopefully, I and heard to his minister, got a few drops the Reverend of blood on his handmade Sheaffer, tell me how my Italian shoes. toil would get me into heaven. But all I saw from that work was a dingy apartment and a dingy life. I spent all of my days enriching his accounts http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/philip-dent
  • 131. 128. Ernie Coffin After what Dent did police, and the next day, to himself, I was next every news show and in line to fill the paper screamed the story vacancy. But they gave about my fraud and it to someone else. embezzlement, and how Old Deegan knew, somehow, the noble bankers that I had taken were dedicated to a few work computers fighting corruption. home and sold them to He needed a scapegoat. pay off my girl’s doctor I gave him what he bills that insurance needed and lost it all. wouldn’t cover. He called me on the carpet, and assured me that he would have mercy on me and my family, if I just confessed. So I did. But he turned me over to the http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/ernie-coffin
  • 132. 129. Lafayette Lincoln Jones When I first became a lawyer, it of all the luminaries was to help defend the poor of the city. The and vulnerable rest of my career was a plummet, from injustice and exploitation. away from the centers of But the more successful you power, until at get, the further you last I was back with the poor, where I get from the people who are needy. started. And how I despised So I found I'd become a them and their weakness. highly-paid legal gunslinger, who changed sides on every issue he used to hold fast to. Which may explain how I stumbled so badly when I defended the arsonists who torched the City Council building. Kyle Kerns ripped my case apart. He shredded my reputation, and all but destroyed my manhood, in front http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/lafayette-lincoln-jones
  • 133. 130. Professor Newcomb Evolution must have selected in favor of religious belief, otherwise why would it be in every single human society? I tried to unlock the secrets of why that was, but I only alienated both sides of the argument. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/professor-newcomb
  • 134. 131. Broderick Deegan It’s true, my reckless speculation led to the collapse of my father’s bank. But it’s not as if he did not know I was doing it or that he didn’t give me some of his money to secretly invest so he did not pay taxes on it. And it’s also true that I lived in a penthouse in Buenos Aires while that Schultz fellow served time for my crimes. And yet, guilt has a way of compounding interest more ruthlessly than my father ever dreamed of. Which is how I found myself leaping in front of an express train, to end a misery that I'd not even noticed had eroded my desire to live. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/20/broderick-deegan
  • 135. 132. Mo Nickle Some folks thinking that it would be just have bad luck. I was The One. always The One where they valued the best worker at what- me and ever repaid my loyalty. job I had. So I was I thought always the Galleria job the first one laid off. They would be said I a new beginning too. was indispensable, Instead until it was a final end. they dispensed with me. And always just when I was due for a raise or a promotion. And stupid me, I went into each new job http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/22/mo-nickle
  • 136. 133. CharlaNoxon I killed him. He didn’t insignificant and like that I wouldn’t poor simply vanish. choose him, preferring a boy who didn’t have And then I got sick. So his money. So he hit I went back to the me, and I shot him city, and turned myself dead. But his daddy paid, in. My short time left so his friends in the was worth spending to watch media lied and said them wriggle in the light. it was an tragic accident. The money that must’ve changed hands. I escaped home to Spoon River and hid. But they never came for me. And Spoon River was just the same. The rich and powerful made the http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/22/charla-noxon
  • 137. 134. Shawn Rigby Yes, I was high. I won’t deny that. But I just stopped to shut my eyes for a bit. I was going to move again in a minute, after I caught my breath. I had no idea the yard I was on belonged to the Mayor. I wasn’t bothering no one. She didn’t need to scream like that. And her bodyguard didn’t need to shoot. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/22/shawn-rigby
  • 138. 135. Marc Lyon I did love her. a witness in But I could not a federal get away. I case that would keep thought if I was me sequestered cruel, she would leave for a whole year. me first. But her She cried and cried, capacity but told me that to absorb hurt she would pray for seemed limitless. the day I would I lied, I found come back to her. reasons to stay She knew I would, away as much long before I as I could. I knew. She owned me. manufactured So I gave in, emergencies, stopped trying to catastrophes, run. She was by and crises that my side, grasping kept me from home. my wrists, when I Once, I told her finally died. I needed to testify as http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/25/marc-lyon
  • 139. 136. Tanya Lyon He could not even But I built my look me in the life with him, and I eye while he told that was not about ridiculous to throw it away story about his just because he “Federal case.” was too weak and scared But I pretended to keep going. to believe it. I knew the truth, all of his lies. The business travel. The overnight trips into the city that just happened to put him there the same time as that harlot Sophia Garzan. I was fooled by none of it. http://spoonriver.metblogs.com/2008/10/25/tanya-lyon