“this was the body: ended, disappeared.”
— from “the terrorists, part 6”
Michael Prihoda will make you feel things. Many of those things are sad. With those sad things come contemplation and an argument with the self over what really matters in this crazy day-to-day existence.
When the towers fell, I stood naked in my living room clutching the remote in one hand and the phone in the other. I knew people there. I had family near there. A friend who never left. It was a moment to question existence, and endless busy signals, and the dignity of television news as they showed the fall of planes and people on a constant rotation. I may not believe in God, but on that day, I prayed to something, because you either believe that things will be okay or you don’t, and I didn’t want to be wrong.
Life is what we assume it is until it isn’t, and Michael Prihoda’s Out of the Sky questions the concept and context of life within modern America and the Post-9/11 world. Is it worth all the struggles and hassles and deductions only to die in the end? Should it all just be sped up? But more importantly, what happens when you don’t have a choice? And you watch as life “hands / live explosives / to the other / man / believing / purpose / was bright, / coming.”
While the question of existence can seem overwhelming, Prihoda is raging against the dying of the light, and raising a glass to whatever existence can be strained from this world.
Purchase your copy of Out of the Sky from Hesterglock Press.