I still remember sitting raptly listening to you
read a story you promised would be
in your next collection, Harlan, or certainly
the one after that, after all you were a writer
and without writing you were a marginal
character in the story of a city given over
to film and television and you were no actor.
You were fearless, you told us so, and you
took your stories to places others dared not,
or wisely chose not to, go for fear of being
labeled as fringe or worse, of being avoided.
You were a harsh critic of culture and spared
no one, your vitriol almost seeming proportional
to the public fame of whoever had the misfortune
to fall within the target zone of your critique.
But what I remember most was sitting
in the diner after your presentation, you
with a plate of french fries, three orders
heaped on a large platter beneath a sea
of ketchup, a red sea that even Moses
would never have been able to part
even with the help of the God whose existence
you had denied vehemently an hour before.