Damian Dressick: DECADENCE ’94 (SOUTHERN) • Cleaver Magazine

Damian Dressick
DECADENCE, ’94 (SOUTHERN)

Rounds in quick succession at Café Lafitte in Exile bleed into slave quarters on Iberville. A sofa included in his rent. New Orleans lore. Amyl nitrate. Fan of porn mags spread across the cocktail table, Honcho, Blueboy. We’re talking the same shit over and over. One of us is embarrassed. By the time it’s light, we’re pressed together in the cramped bed. Exposed brick walls. Framed Nagel print. His cock is thick, easy to get off. I’m verging on sober, uninterested. Birds make their noise outside the window. Truck drivers bang barrels onto Royal Street. I close my eyes. The sheets are clean.

Damian Dressick is the author of the novel 40 Patchtown (Bottom Dog Press) and the flash collection Fables of the Deconstruction (CLASH Books). His writing has appeared in more than fifty literary journals and anthologies, including W.W. Norton’s New Micro, Electric Literature, Post Road, New Orleans Review, CutBank, Smokelong Quarterly, and New World Writing. A Blue Mountain Residency Fellow, Dressick is the winner of the Harriette Arnow Award and the Jesse Stuart Prize. He co-hosts WANA: LIVE!, a (largely) virtual reading series that brings some of the best Appalachian writers to the world. Damian also serves as Editor-in-Chief for the journal Appalachian Lit. For more, check out www.damiandressick.com