As he studied my attention
I refused to blink.  He told me things about my-
self I tried to keep hidden under a coffee stained
American Eagle sweat shirt
that found me on the Clarence rack.


I told him to *******!  But he continued
to weave his words through my intelligence.
He was such an inspired *******; cruelty
bunched together in fifty-seven pages


of brilliance.


There was no winning against his intellectual
abuse.  So I let him have the last word.


I closed the book.