Summer Block has published essays, short fiction, and poetry in McSweeney's, The Awl, The Rumpus, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, and many other publications.
Previously in this series. You love a prostitute with your whole heart but you respect her too much to touch her, talk to her, or learn her name. You are in love with an earnest, loyal young man who adores you, so you've decided to marry a dissolute cad you despise in order to teach yourself a lesson. You've been sitting in this tavern for hours hoping no one notices your clothes are covered…
Previously by Summer Block: Herodotus Writes a History of the 20th Century Ode on an Abandoned Shopping Mall Thou still and slumbering pleasure palace, Where thousands didst once gladly gather Sheltered from the wind and weather To buy a sweatshirt and a copy of Vs. on cassette. Ferns, once tenderly potted, now riotously clamor o'er the escalator; Proud skylights, cracked and battered, survey a vanished world. What benches, where fathers once would rest? What…
If you enjoy this, perhaps you will also like Marcus Aurelius, Sports Broadcaster. On the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906: Concerning the great earthquake, I was not able to gain any information from philosophers or scientists, nor could I gain any satisfactory explanation from the inhabitants of the city, who could explain neither why the great city had toppled nor why it had burned. Some academicians, wishing to seem clever, have attempted to explain the…
