Higher. Lonesomer.

JC Oates has called her new selected stories High Lonesome.

High Lonesome is the best title of a collection of short stories ever. Except it's by Barry Hannah. (My favorite collection of stories ever is by him too: Airships.)

To be fair, Hannah probably knew Louis L'Amour had already used the title for one of his novels.

There's also a movie, with John Barrymore, Jr.

I sort of paid homage to Hannah's title with Down Spooky.

& I have a poem in the book called "High Bluffing."

What's my point? I don't know. I think that I am miffed at old JCO. I tried to read The Assassins once, when I found it in the garage. There were very few grown-up books in my house. This belonged to one of the step dads. I didn't finish it. I went to the library & got some horror novels instead. The librarian didn't stop me. She never stopped me. Sometimes if I thought she was going to balk, I'd just take the books without checking them out. I usually brought them back.

But maybe I will call my next book The Ratchet on My Thigh.

Or For Zoom, the Smell Grows.

Or The Naughty Lie Topography of Sally D. Bupkis.

Or The Collected Poems of Family Picks on Them.

Or Charmonium.

Or Weeping with the Picture Mary.

Or Hunch Poems.

Or Sag O' Crime Minds.

Or Witty, the Math Club's Surface, Their Doomed Man Norm.

Or The Bonnets.

Or Petulant Cavities.

Or Fossil-Fuel Head Covering.