1. Use the following or any reading that offers some difficulty and is relevant to the course material.

Club Midnight

By Charles Simic

 

Are you the sole owner of a seedy nightclub?

 

Are you its sole customer, sole bartender,

Sole waiter prowling around the empty tables?

 

Do you put on wee-hour girlie shows

With dead stars of black-and-white films?

 

Is your office upstairs over the neon lights,

Or down deep in the dank rat cellar?

 

Are bearded Russian thinkers your silent partners?

Do you have a doorman by the name of Dostoyevsky?

 

Or is Fu Manchu coming tonight?

                                        Is Miss Emily Dickinson?

Do you happen to have an immortal soul?

Do you have a sneaky suspicion that you have none?

 

Is that why you throw a white pair of dice,

In the dark, long after the joint closes?