Thomas Pynchon

Loving something that doesn’t love you back

is the beginning of your relationship

with God. Learning to love baseball is fun –

Bud Light funbo-fun, swatted balls funzo-fun.

It was like a Bible camp punishment

to talk of Thomas Pynchon in grad school.

Pynchon’s heat-death, they said, awaited me

if I continued eating Expoghetti.

The ‘noise’ of the world was too much for them;

as if Ivory Soap, Porky Pig cartoons,

supermarket booze and Perry Mason

could drown out their poems about Nixon.

I missed the Expos when I had a school

reading. Oh, God, my creative writing

professor introduced me, noting ‘how lean’

my words were compared to how fat my body.