The war had begun and I realized I could actually die. I would probably receive no warning. A distant event, someone launching a missile, a cloud of gas released upwind, would kill me. The danger expressed itself as an anxiety—hardly any more intense than the anxiety I had already experienced in Washington State, where I had rent to meet, highways to drive, where danger existed too in an accidental relationship to my own actions. A car could flip mine into the median. A serial killer could hog tie me and drop my corpse into a stand of second growth fir trees. I was already used to this—something bad could happen. It would happen without any warning whatsoever. I didn’t have to leave home to find this out.

~ Matt Briggs @ semantikon

Briggs’ novel Shoot the Buffalo was terrific (not to mention highly compostable) and I’ve been reading The Moss Gatherers just this week, so I look forward to his new releases from Final State Press.