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Literature, PoetryDecember 10, 2013

Comedy Is Not Pretty

I can’t say why I’m thinking about Timothy Bunch.
I suppose this rain pattering on the shingles
is the password that opens the door from here to there,
evoking some melancholic need
to frame the scar of memory with words.
Nor can I explain why I vaguely associate summer
with that day I read of his execution,
when it was winter, of course,
maybe not technically– the twelfth of December, 1992–
but the crunch of frosted grass beneath my feet
surfaces now with intimate clarity, as does the icy snap
of the frozen newspaper as I freed it from its box.

“Comedy is not pretty” were Timothy Bunch’s last words
–spoken from the electric chair–
and on the bottom shelf of the bookcase behind the television,
between Vonnegut and Sylvia Plath–that’s where I kept
the Bible he bequeathed me when he shipped to Death Row,
his paperback Catholic Bible
with the annotated notes and torn cover
I repaired by taping on a picture of a Van Gogh painting
I tore out of a book from the jail library.
Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, that’s the one,
and for years it sat by my typewriter
as my homage to dignity,
and to remind me we all dangle above the chasm by frayed thread.

I can’t say why I reminisce,
when, after all, I feel so much but know so little.
I know summers I mow, winters I shovel.
I know the garbage man comes on Tuesdays.
I know I once fell off the chair I stood on,
my Van Gogh Bible in one hand,
an empty bottle of Pinot Noir in the other,
proselytizing to Mary, my one-winged parakeet:
“God is love, dear Mary, precious love… and on the seventh day
love wept inconsolably…. ”

Comedy is not pretty.
Somewhere a mother pushes her baby in a grocery cart.
Invisible angels follow them in the air.
Somewhere a body lurches, a head smokes….
Somewhere a sneeze elicits blessings.

~ Kent Monroe

 

Kent Monroe lives with a delightful gang of cats and dogs in Troy, New Hampshire.  He prefers to garden and write, but also works here and there to feed the gang.  His words have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, and The Write Room.

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

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