The Eleventh Draft

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(A Response to Joan Didion)
‪It’s an absurd supposition, i.e. bases for an argument, that those who are against abortion care about life. We hear staunch leftists say, If you care about life, do something about climate change, …
Something broke finally when he came upon three men firing at a dog they’d corned between buildings on the northside of town. This was when the fighting was more or less done and a kind of post-atrocity languor had set in and the men were left to wonder what to do with the…
When one sets out to imagine the most despicable acts a person might be capable of effecting upon another person, any number of gut-churning fantasies may come to mind. A human-centipede is up there.…
After he retired, he continued to leave the house every morning at 8am and every evening at 5pm, promptly, in order to hit rush hour traffic. Though he never admitted aloud to anyone, the commute, while circular and meaningless, gave him a sense that he still mattered. On…

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What if the President of the United States were a con artist? Okay. Okay. But stay with me, now. Here’s where it gets weird: What if, in addition to…
When I was nine years old I landed flat on my back on the water from a five meter diving platform. I knocked the wind out of myself. I was trying to do…
Many stories depend on setting; without a certain setting they cannot be true; the stories become impossible and false in new environments. Other…
A Last Conversation
Kurt Vonnegut never wrote a story with a villain in it. He learned this from an anthropology class at his university where they taught, according to…
When things come at us in pairs, we must stop, we must worry, we must wonder. We must wonder how to answer the deaths of public figures that have posed…
If you’re thinking maybe this time is different, maybe congress will bring an option to the floor, if you’re thinking maybe a committee will have a…
A stroll along the waterway brought me to know I was along the waterway, talking with my wife about knowing we were talking about knowing we were…
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The Eleventh Draft

Stories and Essays and Occasional Diatribes

The Eleventh Draft

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© 2023 Jordan Watland
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