Mauvaise Foi
They instruct me to walk from the skyline to the centre of the city, just as I did years ago. The film they made of me then has faded to the point where it can no longer be restored. The challenge with this new film, they say, is not to look disheartened as I did as a youth, when to be gloomy was a sign of existentialist faith, but to wear a corporate smile, and to make it seem authentic.
Ian Seed’s collections of prose poems include New York Hotel (2018), Identity Papers (2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (2014), all from Shearsman. A chapbook, Distances (2018), from the Red Ceilings Press, is Seed’s most recent publication.