Portrait of Self as Faulkner with Darlings

                    “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”—William Faulkner (allegedly)

Willie comes home to his Darlings after a long
day of work at the power plant. They rise
from where they were sprawled and run to greet
him. As I Sit Dying leaps up, puts its paws
on Willie’s chest and begins licking his face
as My Mother is a Bird runs to the living room,
grabs a tennis ball and drops it at his feet.
“Today’s the day,” Faulkner sighs as he calls
the darlings out back one at a time to administer
the ‘Old Yeller’ treatment. He shoots dozens
of Darlings: Light in July, The Vanquished,
The Smell and the Fury, and when he runs
out of bullets he strangles them. Awoken
by all the noise I march over from a mile
down the road and catch Willie with only
one darling left and shout “Bill! Would just
one darling kill you?” even though I didn’t
care too much about his writing and only
wanted to go back to sleep, later, it turns
out Yoknapatawpha County, the only surviving
darling, gave him a dozen or so novels and fifty
some short stories and when I read the news,
I let all my darlings sleep in my bed that night,
contorting my body to make room for them all.

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Brett Cortelletti is from Mansfield, Ohio. Currently, he is an M.F.A. candidate at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. In addition to being a reader and a writer, he is also a competitive long-distance runner. Most recently, his work has appeared in Clarion Magazine and The Gordon Square Review.