In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

What Hell Is March if/Ss Your father waits inside his spacious kitchen; he himself is corpulent, and powerless. Nobody seems to know exactly how your illness spreads; it came from love, or some such place. Your father's bought, with forty years of fast talk, door to door, this fancy house you've come home now to die in. Let me tell you what hell is, he turns to me: I got this double fridge, all full of food, and I can't let my son go in. Your parents' friends stop visiting. You are a damper on their spirits. Every day you feel more cold (no human being here can bear the thought—it's growing huge as you grow thin). Ain't it a bitch, you joke, this getting old? I'm not sure I should laugh; no human being helps, except (suddenly, simply) Jesus. Him you hold. We're not allowed to touch you if you weep or bleed. Applying salve to sores that cannot heal your brother wears a rubber glove. With equal meaning, cold or kiss could kill you. Now what do I mean by love? 186 The man who used to love his looks is sunk in bone and looking out. Framed by immunities of telephone and lamp his mouth is shut, his eyes are dark. While we discuss despair he is it, somewhere in the house. Increasingly he's spoken of, not with. In kitchen conferences, we come to terms that we can bear. But where is he? In hell, which is the living room. In hell, which has an easy chair. 187 ...

Share