Paradise Muzzled
By Joe Taylor
Paradise Lost? Negatory, it’s been kept muzzled from the long-ago get-go. The collusion of those two famous gods, Satan and Jehovah, has made certain of this. So very muzzled, in fact, that even now the occurrence of lowly rhyme offers betrayal to any pretense for order or bliss. As proof, Sally Thread has summoned those two same gods, their handy-dandy horny angel, Messenger Mike, and Black Bill, a.k.a. Death, to her Bump Street apartment in Thick City. On this particular hot summer day, she’s also gathered witnesses galore for her revelation: her live-in John Brown, their deaf-mute son Pale, a pizza delivery boy named Asa, Cher Billups, Thick City’s bathtub inspector, and most importantly Prodigy, John’s super-duper student. But step aside, Sally, for it’s Prodigy who will steal the show before nightfall with her own grand revelation.
Joe Taylor is the author of numerous novels and collections of short fiction. He has directed Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama for over 25 years, and, appropriately for a publisher of thoughtful, innovative fiction, he and his wife Tricia house over a dozen stray dogs, who mostly do not savage him.