‘NRA Steaks.’
— Hannah Cohen
Sexual machination. Skeleton crushed by rock. Your work-worn hands. Your eyes shine.
I’m just now re-learning how to read short stories, novels, etc. after a lifetime of reading poetry collections. However, this story by Shane Jesse Christmass appealed to me not only for its title, but its form. I’m reminded of a prose poem here with its blockiness and varying sentences, repetition and alliteration. Along with the theme of death, there’s several mentions of sex and sex-related things, but it never feels sexy or sensual, especially with the phrase “Condoms contain rats.”
What I enjoy about this story is the juxtaposition of beautiful, earthy sentences like “A soft night breeze” followed by “You’re dead”, which opens up to even more unflinching and dark comedic comparisons between class, political ideology, and destruction. The bomb still explodes whether you’re reading this story at the beginning or the end, and the bomb isn’t even the most gripping aspect. It’s the spiraling and unspiraling that keeps me reading every line.