Career

Ned preferred his own company over

pale interface with others who crowded out 

his inner joy. Even his wife lived a life 

of her own within these walls and down the hall. 

He looked to his students in whom he ceded 

an ability to invent some germ 

of genius in writers students were 

assigned to read. He would drum up a theory 

he sold to these impressionable young,

persuaded to claim their respective tickets 

to an effete membership in what 

amounted to a cult that feigned shared 

understanding of some kernel of thought, 

subtle if not downright false, buoyed by 

other acolytes chuffed at the honor 

of being allowed into this cabal.