Loudermilk swallows. He says, “‘The CNN Blues,’” and he pauses. “‘Persona poem,’” he diligently specifies, as if this is the sixth-grade debate society. And Loudermilk proceeds to recite what is by far the worst poem that Lizzie has ever heard.

“Interesting!” Anton Beans all but screams, once his foe’s performance, such as it has been, is complete. “I’m so curious about that poem! Now, OK,” Anton Beans is fully screaming, “NOW YOU.”

He means Harry. Lizzie at last understands the meaning of the performance.

Harry is, for the first time, and how can this be put into words, someone. Anton Beans has succeeded in performing a form of spiritual surgery, a psychic transplant. Instead of curling into himself or spontaneously expiring or even just falling down, Harry takes a shivering step forward and says, in clipped and semi-robotic tones, “‘Mount Weather.’”

Lizzie realizes he means, like, as in mountain.

Harry’s voice is not so bad when you come down to it. It’s high and low both at once and it’s functional, but beyond this it has this sort of superwavy tonal filling that makes you feel it really hard, right at the center of your body?

Mount Weather

I preceded this deluge: the phenomenon

of a pseudo-president; experimental

marriages; cavernous, red, dusty-red, gilded,

red, polysyllabic words (red, gilded, red-dusty, der).

Otherwise, I might be doin’ something

better, eating a paste of mashed bananas

in an unpadded, wooden saddle;

coddled, if chemically enhanced. A

majority of my sainted hours are now prosthetic

fingers, important fathers, lots of feathers,

and strange oaths. People had a certain

humility, a contentious style and booming voice.

They were one Immortalization Committee,

a collective yawn; white stars, though flabby.

I’m slow but I passed. I preceded this deluge:

earned media; vast aromatic plants; “stop

loss” policies; a database of fans; the so-called boffo

scoop. I remember the frisson I felt. Yes,

yes; and yes. A female supplicant

wore a creamy sheepskin mustache.

I stared back, uncomprehending,

as the full flowering of the middle classes

commenced in a Napoleonic burst.

Viewing that oppression as a central part

of our liberation, bogged down by

diaper bags, we were hamstrung by sullen

bureaucracy, aka, the world’s one mono-spoof.

We did not have enough soldiers, even if their wives

were in the dark. The premise of our exotic exercises

was a floating island or a layer cake; some

mellifluous middle names; well-intentioned but

sloppy thinking; heavily subsidized corn.

There came a giant sucking sound. It just sat

there, oh ye fatty cold cuts! The white-collar hustle

and hideous furniture were a collateral benefit,

leavened with occasional doses of nostalgia, swarms

of finches, ruddy drakes, black-tailed gazelle.

Any vague, platitudinous quotation could

absorb me well. My face was rather badly singed,

so we applied a bleaching gel. Everything

was deliberate, meticulous, red, very red. And yes,

yes; very yes, too. There was a lot of esprit.