“It’s important for me to have someone read the work who won’t let me get away with things. A bullshit detector. Essential to the process.”

I came to on the loggia—the only question was whose loggia? There was the Cavanaghs’ loggia, designed by that famous and locally celebrated architect whom I once met. The name is gone. 

I know your publication is a newsworthy one, so I know you’re used to getting letters about newsworthy stuff. You’d normally get a letter about flesh-eating streptococcus or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

This was fifteen years ago in Hoboken. The storefront apartment on Madison Street. Her front step served as a landing pad for local strays. One stray was a shepherd-and-lab mix, one was a

The Chicken Mask was sorrowful, Sis. The Chicken Mask was supposed to hustle business; it was supposed to invite the customer to gorge him or herself within our establishment;

The Ruin — where my friend Jorge Ruiz spent some of his nights — was decorated in twisted car parts and fruitless conversation and postindustrial clutter, in the collision of strangers and in the flicker of lost opportunities.

Metcalf’s “poeticized collage” reckons with his great-grandfather, Herman Melville.
It is extremely rare, these days, to encounter something that feels completely new. That is, most literary artifacts are pretty easy to slot into one format or the…