#61

KEVIN CLAY

April 2, 2020

Will the dead carts roll by and by? I like to think I

do not fear death. It is true that it does not discriminate.

In its intense egalitarianism, it isn’t arbitrary. 

It is surely the most democratic of atrocities. The adored 

and adoring, the murderous prince of formaldehyde,

the torpid king, the lord of adipocere, the guardian 

always of silence. Put a little elbow grease on that, 

my father would say. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing

well. It is a new sort of solitude we have here. Imposed

by a fool and enforced by a demon. We fill the silence

with music, with our own loud voices. At times it seems

we are having a war. But in the end, that is no more than

the TV. And we are amused, while the butcher’s bill mounts. 

KEVIN CLAY lives in Arlington, Texas with his wife Beth. He has published in the Southern Humanities Review, the British journal Staple, and in many other periodicals. He has taught at a number of different universities and colleges, and is presently retired and teaching part-time at Mountain View College in Dallas.