Proofreading At the Picayune: II

ISSUE: Winter 1977

We have eyes like Choctaw bonepickers:
Catch extra letters, all caps, no caps,
Wrong caps, censorious fingers
Crosshatching, squiggling, slashing,
Sending surplus characters looping
Off the margins into limbo.
We penetrate New Pork’s disguise,

Are amazed at advice to “keep eyes
And arse open,” run Aries columns
In Gemini boxes (find your lover strange lately?)
And ride herd on the reported world.
But when too big with pride, remember
The moon landing and the packed bus
Running into the river below Waterproof, La.
ASTRONUTS LAND ON THE MOON
16 WATERPROOF CITIZENS DROWN

John Carr

John Carr is a native of Mississippi, has an M.A. in English from Hollins College, and was writer-in-residence at Phillips Exeter Academy in 1970—1971. He is the editor of Kite Flying and Other Irrational Acts, a series of interviews with twelve Southern writers published by LSU Press in 1972.