Eric Paul

The Man Who Can’t Say No

She lost her father to a city he founded in his brain.
He built disappearing streets, littered with
yellowed newspapers, bills, and love letters to
women he’s never met. Bus stops, skyscrapers, and
automobiles made from books he’s never read.
He’s sculpted statues of his children and ex-wives
out of canned goods, stitched a city flag out of
clothes he’d outgrown and turned bedrooms into
museums for the world’s largest collection of tiny
spoons. And suddenly the population explodes.

Ghosts of dead relatives and friends bang on pipes,
turn streetlights on and off. Families of stray
animals move in beneath the ceiling for a sky
that holds the suffering sun and moon.

Eric Paul is a writer and musician from Providence, Rhode Island. He has been the lyricist and vocalist for various experimental music acts. Eric has released over ten albums in his fifteen year career and performs regularly worldwide; he is currently earning his MFA in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.