Poet Joshua Clover and 11 Students May Face Prison Time

Ways to Save Money
by john bennett

Pinch pennies. Grow your own vegetables. Pull all your teeth with pliers and put the whole bloody mess under your pillow. Pretend you’re asleep and when the tooth fairy shows up, wrestle her to the floor, tie and gag her, sell her to the sex trade.

Now we’re talking big bucks. The tooth-fairy seed money will multiply like fishes and loaves, and soon you’ll be a bona-fide Daddy Warbucks, selling arms to everyone under the table while your hands remain soft clean and pink. You can start your own mega-church and sleep with ex nuns and young boys. You can even buy back the tooth fairy for a night, her Tinker Bell magic diminished, but her legs still good.

Once you’ve reached this stage, everything you touch turns to gold. Even scandal can’t hurt you, accusations boomerang and roll off you like hot spit on a griddle. You’re the talk of the town, a late-night-show sensation, the kind of hero that spawns fan clubs. Song writers write songs about you and you’re made the ambassador to New Guinea. You’re invited to witness lethal injections.

“Live simply so that I may simply live,” were your parting words to the press as you boarded the plane to your new post, and the whole world tightened its belt.